Goodreads: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker (checkpoint 4)

Audiobook: 3hrs 12mins \ 22hrs 42mins

This concluded chapter 3 from last night and tonight.

Here we continued the discussion of the four major points and areas of science that are helping to converge the body with the mind (e.g., genetics and psychology). That is, to be able to describe the mind and the body as one in the same, not two distinct parts, one controlled by physical and chemical processes (body) while the other is not (mind).

Pinker described the role of genetics in human behavior from early childhood development into adulthood.

He wraps up the chapter with a daunting idea for the cherished intellectual belief of our age, namely that love, the will, and consciousness are all assumed to be part of the soul and have always been placed in opposition to mere biological functions. For, if these three things are only biological adoptions implemented in the circuitry of the brain, then "the ghost in the machine" has even less to do, and renders it practially unused, or dead.