Human Nature, Reason, and Progress: John Gray’s Straw Dogs and Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature

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Human Nature, Reason, and Progress: John Gray’s

Straw Dogs and Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our

Nature

Richard Sandlant

April 2015

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Introduction Can humanity make progress to a better world, or will the dark forces in our nature inevitably pull us

back into the quagmire of unreason and violence? Two outstanding modern thinkers, the political

philosopher John Gray and the humanist scientist Steven Pinker, have grappled with this question

and present very different conclusions. Gray describes Pinker’s magnum opus as “nonsense”,1 and

Pinker responds by calling Gray “not just wrong but howlingly, flat-earth, couldn’t-be-more-wrong

wrong”.2 This paper examines their views and poses the simple question: who is closer to the truth?

Professor John Gray is an iconoclastic English political theorist notorious for pricking the balloon of

liberal humanism, most famously with his top-seller Straw Dogs.3 He is a formidable scholar, a

protégé of the much-loved philosopher of ideas, Sir Isaiah Berlin, with a pedigree including Oxford,

Harvard, Yale and the London School of Economics. The unexpected success of Straw Dogs

prompted him to take ‘early retirement’ and become a modern man of letters. His particular forte:

the ability to wield a delicious barb while skewering humanity’s most cherished beliefs. Gray is a

master of dry, erudite aphorisms that cleverly upend conventional assumptions. “Humanism”, he

tells us, “is a secular religion thrown together from decaying scraps of Christian myth”.4 “Belief in

progress is the Prozac of the thinking classes”.5 “To think of humans as freedom-loving, you must be

ready to view nearly all of human history as a mistake”.6 To his admirers, Gray is the “world’s

greatest living philosopher”, or at least “among the finest writers alive—the nearest thing we have

to a Nietzsche by a country mile”.7 To his detractors, he is a “full-blooded apocalyptic nihilist”8, with

an “Eeyore relish” for doom and gloom.9

Professor Steven Pinker, by contrast, is a hip, modern, family-friendly Harvard/MIT evolutionary

psychologist, with a gift for penning highly readable and distinctly optimistic popular science books

on the human condition, such as The Blank Slate. In his more recent monumental study on human

nature and progress, The Better Angels Of Our Nature, he argues that various civilizing influences,

including the restraining influence of ‘Leviathan’, Peter Singer’s “expanding circle” of empathy, and

the Enlightenment’s “escalator of reason”, can and clearly have enabled humanity to make genuine

progress—“progress that is halting and incomplete, but unmistakable nonetheless”.10 An unabashed

Humanist Laureate, 2006 Humanist of the Year, Pinker tells us that humanism is “inextricable from a 1 John Gray (2011), "Delusions of peace", September 21, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review; see also John Gray (2015, forthcoming), The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2 Steven Pinker (2015), 'Guess what? More people are living in peace now. Just look at the numbers', March 20, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/wars-john-gray-conflict-peace?CMP=share_btn_gp. 3 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin Books.

4 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.31. 5 John Gray (2004), Heresies, Granta Books, p.2. 6 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.58. 7 Thomas McGrath (2013), 'DM talks 'Godless mysticism' with John Gray, the world's greatest living philosopher', February 15, http://dangerousminds.net/comments/dm_talks_godless_mysticism_with_john_gray_the_worlds_greatest_living_philos. 8 Terry Eagleton (2002), 'Humanity and other animals', September 7, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/sep/07/highereducation.news2 9 A. C. Grayling (2007) 'Through the looking glass', July 3, https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/1423/through-

the-looking-glass. 10 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin Books, p.696.

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scientific understanding of the world”, and that it is becoming “the de facto morality of modern

democracies, international organizations, and liberalizing religions”, its unfulfilled promise defining

“the moral imperatives we face today”.11

Pinker the humanist and Gray the iconoclast are on a collision course. But this is more than just an

‘academic’ argument between two professors. This is a debate that everyone has a stake in. If

you’re upset by Gray the apocalyptic nihilist’s jibes against humanism you may be concerned to hear

that he is not just “the voice of one crying in the wilderness but one leading an increasingly vast and

vocal crowd”.12 What if enough followers heed his siren call to abandon humanism? Might we all

end up as lambs led to the slaughter? “Passive nihilism” in a dangerous world such as ours could be

a luxury that few, aside from well-heeled men of letters, can afford to indulge in.13

Gray argues that any attempt to make things better will only make things worse. “Can we not think

of the aim of life as being simply to see?” he asks, innocently.14 The ‘contemplative life’ that he

offers as an alternative to humanism offers tempting relief from the prospect of endless dystopian

failure. But can we really afford to give up? Won’t that simply cede the territory to those with even

darker designs? At times, Gray’s unremitting pessimism seems overdone, as if everything must be

made to fit the mould. He has been accused of generating a shallow sort of popularity by “helping

himself to the cut-rate superiority of the confirmed cynic”.15 He can appear to enjoy himself just a

tad too much, especially when his targets, such as hapless scientists, can’t fathom why they are

lumped in with the religious (in Gray’s iconoclastic world the atheist scientist Richard Dawkins

becomes a “neo-Christian evangelist”).16 Is John Gray just a “nasty piece of work … snide in the way

that only a pompous British intellectual can be snide”17, or is there something more going on?

There is a lot at stake in this debate. Is the future of humanity doomed to failure? Should we all just

give up and retire to the country-side, or is there a fighting chance to make a better world for

ourselves and our children? Are Gray and Pinker really so far apart in their views as they seem?

Which one is closest to the truth? This paper will explore these and other questions while trying to

come to a conclusion about the possibility of human progress.

11 Steven Pinker (2013),'Science Is Not Your Enemy An impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians', August 6, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities. 12 Julian Baggini (2013), ‘The demolition man’, February 22, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b7f10bdc-7a92-11e2-9c88-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3R8AXqUUC. 13 Simon Critchley (2013), ‘John Gray’s Godless Mysticism: On "The Silence of Animals"’, June 2, https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/john-grays-godless-mysticism-on-the-silence-of-animals. 14 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.199. 15 Thomas Nagel (2013), 'Pecking Order. John Gray’s ‘Silence of Animals’', July 5, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/books/review/john-grays-silence-of-animals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 16 John Gray (2014), 'The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins. His atheism is its own kind of narrow religion', October 2, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119596/appetite-wonder-review-closed-mind-richard-dawkins. 17

Jerry Coyne (2012), ‘John Gray purports to review de Botton, but really reviews atheism’, https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/john-gray-purports-to-review-de-boutton-but-really-reviews-atheism.

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Nature versus nurture In 2002, Steven Pinker wrote a controversial book called The Blank Slate, in which he attacked the

biologically naïve ‘Standard Social Science Model’ for underestimating the importance of natural

selection and biology in shaping human nature.18 The Blank Slate is one of the better examples of

‘evolutionary psychology’, a field which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, when a series of popular

science books attempted to link our ‘true’ nature to our animal origins through evolution. Examples

include Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression, Desmond

Morris’s The Naked Ape, and in particular, E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology, which caused a massive

reaction when it was published.19 As the philosopher Simon Blackburn writes:

“Pinker is an unblushing proponent of “evolutionary psychology,” the descendant of

sociobiology that has swept campuses and bookstores alike for the last decade or so”.20

In 2002, John Gray reviewed The Blank Slate in glowing terms (a rarity, as anyone who has read

Gray’s book reviews will know). Impressed by the unflinching scientific realism of sociobiology, he

recommended that “every intellectually literate person” should read E.O. Wilson’s On Human

Nature,21 and added that:

“[F]or the most comprehensive and exhaustive argument for the reality of human nature …

they should turn to Pinker”.22

It should not be surprising that Gray embraced The Blank Slate, because Gray and Pinker are in

fundamental agreement on human nature. For a start, they both agree that there is a human

nature, and that the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ was always more ideology than science. This

was the point of The Blank Slate—to present the case for nature versus nurture and to attack the

politically-correct idea that humans can simply change what they don’t like about themselves. As

Gray himself put it:

“The Blank Slate provides an invaluable survey of the evidence showing that what Pinker

calls the "official theory"—that the human mind is in some deep way a social or cultural

construction—is false. Both genetics and research in the advancing science of the brain

show the human mind to be rooted firmly in the biology of the human animal”.23

There are lines in The Blank Slate that could have been written by John Gray. For example, where

Pinker tells us that the Blank Slate has become “the secular religion of modern intellectual life”, “the

central dogma of a secular faith, avowed in public proclamations like a daily prayer or pledge of

allegiance”. Or where Pinker writes that violence is not a “primitive, irrational urge”, or “pathology”,

18 See Richard Webster (1995), 'Steven Pinker and the limitations of Darwinian theory', Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, And Psychoanalysis, Basic Books, cited in http://www.richardwebster.net/thelimitationsofdarwiniantheory.html. 19 See Leslie Stevenson and David L. Haberman (1998), Ten Theories of Human Nature (Third Edition), Oxford University Press, p.211. 20 Simon Blackburn (2002), 'Meet the Flintstones', November 21st, http://www.powells.com/review/2002_11_21.html. 21

E. O. Wilson (1978), On Human Nature, Harvard University Press. 22

John Gray (2002), 'The darkness within' (Book Review of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate), September 16, http://www.richardwebster.net/nsblankslate.htm. 23 John Gray (2002), 'The darkness within'.

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but instead “a near-inevitable outcome of the dynamics of self-interested, rational social

organisms”. Or where he says that “conflicts of interest are inherent to the human condition” and

that, “if anything, it is the belief that violence is an aberration that is dangerous, because it lulls us

into forgetting how easily violence can erupt in quiescent places”.24

Gray couldn’t have said it better himself. One of Gray’s leitmotifs is that “Humans think they are

free, conscious beings, when in reality they are deluded animals”.25 We can’t escape our animal

nature, he says, and thus “growing scientific knowledge is not producing a more rational view of the

world, but a secular mythology that is further from the truth of the human condition than the

religious myths of the past”.26 Human evil, in Gray’s view, is “something deeper and more

constitutive of human life itself. The capacity and propensity for destruction goes with being

human”.27

Human nature and progress Pinker and Gray start from a similar position on human nature and yet Gray the pessimist appears to

conclude there is no hope and Pinker the optimist believes the lamp of reason can light our way.

The fact that Pinker’s optimism only seems to fully emerge with The Better Angels of Our Nature

helps to explain why Gray was singing Pinker’s praises in 2002 and attacking him in 2012.28 But then,

Pinker’s combination of biological realism and humanist optimism is unusual and can be confusing,

as for John Quiggan:

“In [The Better Angels], Pinker appears to me to change sides almost completely, from

pessimist to optimist and from genetic determinist to social improver. Not only does he

present evidence that war and violence are declining in relative importance, his explanation

for this seems to be entirely consistent with the Standard Social Science Model he

caricatured and debunked in The Blank Slate”.29

But Pinker hasn’t changed sides. In The Blank Slate he rejects any one-dimensional characterisation

of human nature solely in terms of its destructive tendencies. He recognises that the human species

houses beneficent and constructive motives, as well as evil and destructive ones.30

“The prevalence of violence in the kinds of environments in which we evolved does not

mean that our species has a death wish, an innate thirst for blood, or a territorial imperative.

24 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, pp. 3, 307, 329, 313, and 314. 25

John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.120. 26 John Gray (2003), Heresies, Penguin, p.65. 27 John Gray (2014), 'The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins. His atheism is its own kind of narrow religion', October 2, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119596/appetite-wonder-review-closed-mind-richard-dawkins. 28 For ‘attack mode’, see John Gray (2011), "Delusions of peace", September 21, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review and John Gray (2015), 'John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war', March 14, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining?CMP=share_btn_tw. 29

John Quiggan (2009), 'Is this the same Steven Pinker?', August 5, http://crookedtimber.org/2009/08/05/is-this-the-same-steven-pinker/. 30 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.125.

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There are good evolutionary reasons for the members of an intelligent species to try to live in

peace” (emphasis added).31

The real issue, Pinker writes, is how we can leverage the more positive aspects of our human nature

to rise above ourselves.32 Here, The Blank Slate identifies the very same mechanisms that he

expands on later in The Better Angels. Thus, he talks about the evolution of moral codes and

cooperation (yes there are apparently unselfish genes), the gentle, calming effects of trade (“you

can’t kill someone and trade with him too”), Peter Singer’s Expanding Circle enjoys a significant

exposition, including the benefits of a wider, more cosmopolitan view of life, and positive side-

effects from increasing literacy, travel and knowledge of history (all of which can function to alter

the calculation of costs and benefits), the rational process of learning from our mistakes is

introduced, and of course we have Leviathan (“the most effective general violence-reduction

technique ever invented”).33

Throughout, Pinker clearly states that human nature, warts and all, is compatible with moral and

social progress. Even more, he argues that it is human nature which explains “the obvious progress

that has taken place over millennia”. This bears repeating: it is thanks to the beneficent and

constructive components of our human nature that we have seen the gradual elimination of “slavery,

punishment by mutilation, execution by torture, genocide for convenience, endless blood feuds, the

summary killing of strangers, rape as the spoils of war, infanticide as a form of birth control, and the

legal ownership of women”.34

‘Second’ and ‘third’ natures In The Better Angels of our Nature Pinker provides a more fully fleshed-out exposition of the case

that he introduced in The Blank Slate for human nature being compatible with moral and social

progress. All the old favourites are back, but now we also have new gems like Norbert Elias’

‘Civilizing Process’, the ‘Humanitarian Revolution’, and an expanded treatment of Peter Singer’s

‘Escalator of Reason’.35

Throughout, Pinker proceeds from the assumption that humans have a ‘first nature’, the animal

nature that we have inherited through evolution. This ‘first nature’ consists of the ‘evolved motives’

that governed our animal life, including our propensity to violence. However, in addition to our ‘first

nature’ Pinker suggests that we can also develop a ‘second’ and even a ‘third’ nature.

Our ‘second nature’ consists of the ingrained habits of civilised society such as refinement,

self-control and consideration for others. It has to be acquired—that’s why we call it our

‘second nature’.36

Our ‘third nature’ consists of a conscious reflection on these habits, so that by using reason

and knowledge we can analyse and evaluate which aspects of our cultural norms (our

‘second nature’) we want to keep, and which have outlived their usefulness.37

31 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.58. 32 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.165. 33

Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, pp. 188, 191, 168, 166ff, 320, 333, and 330. 34

Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.166. 35 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, pp. 69, 133, and 690. 36 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.70.

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Pinker argues that our fate is therefore something of an open question, capable of going either way.

The ‘better angels’ of our nature might save us from ourselves (“with violence, as with so many

other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution”).38

Prominent among these ‘better angels’ are our natural gifts for reason and knowledge. Humans,

Pinker points out, have highly evolved primate cognitive and emotional faculties, enabling us to

anticipate consequences when we make decisions to act. Thanks to these cognitive faculties, we can

appreciate the advantages of cooperation over the long term, and we can see that without a moral

code we will all be worse off. Through the expansion of Peter Singer’s ‘Circle of Empathy’, we can

identify and sympathise with ‘the other’, and with our knowledge of how all this works, we can

develop ‘gadgets’ (such as Leviathan) to control our inner demons (Pinker writes that we have come

to think of government “as a gadget—a piece of technology invented by humans for the purpose of

enhancing their collective welfare”).39

The escalator of reason In The Better Angels, Pinker argues that reason in particular is the ‘angel’ in our nature that offers

the greatest hope for the future.40 Significantly, he suggests that:

“The universe of ideas, in which one idea entails others, is itself an exogenous force, and

once a community of thinkers enters that universe, they will be forced in certain directions

regardless of their material surroundings”.41

This Platonic idea of reason as “exogenous force” can also be found in the metaphysics of

mathematics and science, which as Pinker writes, provide a source of logical relationships and

empirical knowledge that is “independent of the psychological makeup of the thinkers who attempt

to grasp them”.

“As humans have honed the institutions of knowledge and reason, and purged superstitions

and inconsistencies from their systems of belief, certain conclusions were bound to follow,

just as when one masters the laws of arithmetic certain sums and products are bound to

follow”.42

The idea that reason can influence us in ways that we might not have intended is a very potent idea,

and one also derived from the philosophy of Peter Singer. In his highly influential book, The

Expanding Circle, Singer starts from the proposition that evolution has, somehow, thrown up a

primate species capable of reasoning well.43 “We may use reason to enable us to satisfy our needs”,

he writes, “but reason then develops its own motivating force”. The process of reasoning is like

mathematics, it follows a logic that is independent of our desires, and can take us to conclusions that

we did not foresee. True, most of the time when we reason we stay close to what has gone before,

but occasionally “outstanding thinkers”, like Socrates, break out of the narrow confines of customary

37 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.128. 38 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.336. 39 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, pp. 58, 188, and 160. 40

Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.668. 41

Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.180 (emphasis added). 42 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.690. 43 Peter Singer (1981), The Expanding Circle, Princeton University Press, p.87.

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thinking. When this happens, reason acts like an escalator, and once the process is started it is

difficult to predict where it may end. Reason may have been produced by evolution, but it

transcends biology.44

Implicit in all this, of course, is that humans are free to make choices; that we are not just wholly-

determined, bio-mechanical slaves to either genes or our environment. Pinker assures us that no

“sane biologist” would ever “dream of proposing that human behaviour is deterministic, as if people

must commit acts of promiscuity, aggression, or selfishness at every opportunity”.45 Our

“experience of choosing is not a fiction”, he writes, it is a “real neural process, with the obvious

function of selecting behaviour according to its foreseeable consequences”.46

Where reason is allowed to flourish, writes Pinker, “its own logic will impel it, in the fullness of time,

to respect the interests of ever-increasing numbers of others”.47 This is the central proposition,

perhaps the most important proposition, in The Better Angels. But of course, reason needs a little

help along the way. By itself, reason is purely instrumental; it can work equally well in the service of

evil as in the service of good.

To ensure that reason is heading in the right direction, it helps if there are enabling conditions.

Among these are that we value life in this world (and that we hold life to be extremely precious),

that we have bonds of community, high levels of literacy, and a cosmopolitan outlook. There can be

‘no guarantees’ that we won’t be infected by ‘pathological ideologies’, Pinker admits, but “one

vaccine is an open society in which people and ideas move freely and no one is punished for airing

dissenting views, including those that seem heretical to polite consensus”.48

Homo rapiens—the rapacious primate This is all very well, responds Gray, but what about our human nature? We are Homo rapiens,49

rapacious primates, highly intelligent, crazy as a loon. “The human animal is unnaturally violent by

its very nature”.50 Our unreasonable human nature makes use of reason, knowledge, and all the

same tricks of the trade that the humanists think can save us. But we can’t use them to escape our

own nature, Gray argues, because it’s always there, in everything we do.

Gray has in mind a particular target—the humanist who is seduced by the fantasy that humanity can

use science and knowledge to take charge of its own evolution.51 Humanists, Gray will tell you, are

modern-day evangelicals for the myth of progress. But in his view, their biggest mistake is that they

think humans alone can free themselves from their animal nature. They imagine that we have the

capacity to change our nature, and this is what makes us different to every other animal on the

44 Peter Singer (1981), The Expanding Circle, Princeton University Press, pp. 143, 88, 96-99, 114 and 169. 45 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.112. 46 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.175. 47 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.669. 48 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.569. 49 See, for example, John Gray (2002), ‘Homo Rapiens and mass extinction: An era of solitude?’, Heresies Granta Books, pp.32-40. 50

Cited in Galen Strawson (2015), 'Review of ‘The Soul of the Marionette’, by John Gray', March 6, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/88d5944a-c1b6-11e4-bd24-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3Wtu2ah00. 51 John Gray (2004), Heresies, Granta Books, p.29.

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planet.52 But it is “plainly absurd”, Gray says, to think that the human animal can “overcome the

natural limits that shape the lives of other animals”.53

For Gray, this ‘fiction’ that humans can change their nature is a “cardinal error”, one that we have

uncritically inherited from Socrates, the Patron Saint of Humanism, and Christianity. Socrates

hatched the idea that humans are unique in having a capacity for reason that other animals don’t

have.54 The Greeks influenced the early Christians, who came to think that humans can make free

choices unlike other animals “which float along with the natural drift of their species”.55 Gray never

seems to tire from reminding us that we have inherited this cardinal error from Greek myth and

Christian dogma and simply repackaged it as ‘scientific humanism’.56 For Gray, the idea “that human

beings are, by their very nature, free” is “one of the most harmful fictions that has ever been

promoted anywhere”.57

Now, in light of the previous agreement between Pinker and Gray on human nature, we should be

clear about what Gray is really getting at here. Is he simply saying that human nature is what it is,

and you can’t change millions of years of evolution overnight? If that was all he was saying, then

there would be no disagreement. Is he merely saying that human nature is “radically flawed”, a fact

that Christianity at least could recognise in the doctrine of Original Sin?58 This can’t be all that he is

saying, either, because this is something that Pinker surely can also agree with. No humanist,

especially a cognitive scientist, thinks that human nature is absent its flaws.

No, the real difference between Gray and Pinker is not their views on human evolution or human

nature. Gray might be more one-dimensional, and Pinker more n-dimensional, but the real question

is whether after accepting everything there is to say about our human nature there is still any

possibility left for progress. Are we so flawed that we can’t use the escalator of reason?

Gray makes much out of the argument that our corruption is not some ‘error’ that we can fix

through reason. “We have a sickness and there is no cure”, he says. Freud, “the greatest 20th

century Enlightenment thinker”, showed that “humans could only ever be partially sane”.59 The

delusion that we can cure ourselves of our sickness through reason is the real sickness.60

“The belief in reason that is being promoted today rests on a number of childishly simple

ideas. One of the commonest is that history's crimes are mistakes that can be avoided in

future as we acquire greater knowledge. But human evil isn't a type of error that can be

discarded like an obsolete scientific theory. If history teaches us anything it's that hatred and

52 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.4. 53 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.80. 54 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.76. 55 John Gray (2002), ‘Biotechnology and the post-human future’, Heresies, p. 26. 56 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.77. 57 J. P. O'Malley (2013), 'The fiction of humanity: An interview with John Gray', March 11, https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4075/the-fiction-of-humanity-an-interview-with-john-gray. 58

John Gray (2004), Heresies, Granta Books, p.8. 59 John Gray (2009), Gray’s Anatomy, Penguin, p.12. 60 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.85.

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cruelty are permanent human flaws, which find expression whatever beliefs people may

profess”.61

This is a powerful statement, to be sure, but it still misses the point. Pinker would surely agree with

Gray that we can’t use reason to cure ourselves of our human nature.62 The issue is not whether we

can cure our human nature, but whether it is possible to counteract it.

The real question for Gray Humanists can agree that the reality of human nature makes progress difficult, but the real question

Gray must address is whether progress is impossible. Why can’t humans make progress, using

reason? No-one is saying it is easy, it’s the sort of thing that obviously will involve many false starts

and failures, but surely Pinker anticipates all this when he writes:

“[F]or all its limitations, human nature includes a recursive, open-ended, combinatorial

system for reasoning, which can take cognizance of its own limitations. That is why the

engine of Enlightenment humanism, rationality, can never be refuted by some flaw or error

in the reasoning of the people in a given era. Reason can always stand back, take note of the

flaw, and revise its rules so as not to succumb to it next time”.63

Pinker and the humanists are not claiming that the escalator of reason can be used to cure us of our

nature; they are claiming that reason is an exogenous force that can lead some of us, at least, to

better choices. They are claiming that with the assistance of reason even radically flawed hominids

can recognise their radical flaws, as Gray himself seems to do so easily. They are saying that if

humans are clever enough they can design gadgets, techniques, and tricks to mobilise our ‘better

angels’ against our ‘darker demons’.

Against this sort of argument what is Gray’s response? He can’t demonstrate logically that it is

impossible for humans to make progress using reason to combat the irrationality in our own nature.

There’s no logical contradiction here to be had—it’s simply a difficult thing to do. So what

arguments can Gray provide to support such a strong contention?

Not a whole lot, as it turns out. The best he can do is to propose that the idea itself is preposterous.

“The notion that human life could ever be ruled by reason is an exercise in make-believe

more far-fetched than any of the stories we were told as children. We'd all be better off if

we saw ourselves as we are—intermittently and only ever partly-rational creatures, who

never really grow up”.64

61 John Gray (2014), 'A Point of View: The child-like faith in reason', July 18, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28341562. 62 See Thomas Nagel (2013), 'Pecking Order. John Gray’s ‘Silence of Animals’', July 5, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/books/review/john-grays-silence-of-animals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 63

Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.186. 64 John Gray (2014), 'A Point of View: The child-like faith in reason', July 18, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28341562.

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Gray ends up pointing out failure after failure after failure, usually after some delusional ideologue

stands up and proclaims: “I’ve got it this time”. “Many of the worst crimes of the last century”, he

writes, “were the work of people possessed by what they believed to be reason”.65

“If human beings were potentially capable of applying reason in their lives, they would show

some sign of learning from what they had done wrong in the past, but history and everyday

practice show them committing the same follies over and over again”.66

All this makes reading Gray something of a failure-junkie’s thrill ride. Read enough John Gray and

you too may feel like giving up. Not only does he have, by far, the richest source of material to refer

to but he also has a special talent for uncovering obscure examples and painting a visceral picture

that puts you right in the frame.

Which is all very well and important to acknowledge, but once again Gray is attacking something of a

straw dog. Pinker has no issue with the foibles and limitations of human nature, and none of this

proves the impossibility of making progress. All Gray can do is show that the human track record of

failures is truly epic.

Human nature and freedom What else can Gray say? His central argument is that we’re fundamentally ‘not free’ to begin with.67

If we’re not free to make choices, then the whole question of whether we can use reason to combat

our own human nature becomes moot. There are two key versions of this argument, the first of

which appeals to determinism, which is a metaphysical position derived, more than anything else,

from the limitations of current scientific methodology, and the second of which relies on the radical

flaws of human nature.

Thus, Gray tells us that the ‘standard view’ in modern science, namely ‘reductive materialism’, views

mind as “just a local episode in the history of matter”.68 If mind is just a ‘local episode’ in a causal

chain of physical matter, part of some great stream of physical cause and effect, then there is

nothing really to be said about human freedom. It doesn’t exist. Similarly, citing the research of the

scientist Benjamin Libet,69 Gray tells us that ‘free will’ is an illusion, and for good measure so is the

‘self’.70 But the claim that free will is an illusion is highly contested, and Gray knows it. While Libet’s

research certainly raises many important and interesting questions, it is far from proving that free

will is an illusion. And recall that Pinker assures us that no sane biologist “would ever dream of

proposing that human behaviour is deterministic”.71

Similarly, there has been much written about the ‘self’ and whether it is an illusion. The fact is that

science is at a loss to explain consciousness using its standard third-person descriptive methodology.

The ‘self’ seems to be some sort of emergent property that disappears in a puff of smoke when you

65 John Gray (2009), Gray’s Anatomy, Penguin, p.16. 66 John Gray (2014), 'A Point of View: The child-like faith in reason', July 18, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28341562. 67 For more on this, see John Gray (2015, forthcoming), The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 68

John Gray (2011), The Immortalisation Commission, Allen Lane, p.21. 69

John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.66. 70 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.76. 71 Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate, Penguin, p.112.

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look at it too closely. It may very well be described as an ‘illusion’, but this doesn’t mean that a

human can’t make a free choice. Perhaps different parts of the brain collaborate to make a decision,

and the sense we have of the ‘conductor’ (i.e. ourselves) might be an illusion. This may be true, but

the question is really about the human capacity to make the decision and not, per se, what it is

exactly (or which part of the brain) that is really making the decision.

Just what does Gray think we are anyway? At one point he writes that “like other animals we are

embodiments of universal Will, the struggling, suffering energy that animates everything in the

world”.72 Elsewhere he says that: “At bottom the world itself is will, a field of energy that finds

expression as bodily desire”.73 This Schopenhauer-like metaphysic of “struggling, suffering energy”

goes well beyond the standard scientific model of an objective universe of physical matter. These

are cloudy waters. Gray stirs them up to accentuate doubt about our capacity to choose, but

elsewhere he suggests that we “set aside philosophical disputation about what free will might mean,

and whether we have it”.74

So the argument from determinism isn’t very convincing, and nor is it consistent with the rest of

what Gray has to say. It’s hard for Gray to argue that we should accept the findings of modern

science when he otherwise tells us that the findings of modern science (e.g. quantum physics) reveal

that we can never truly understand our world.75 “If we know anything from the history of science it

is that the most severely-tested theories still contain errors”.76 Gray can hardly appeal to the

findings of ‘modern science’ when on the next page he tells us that the notion that we discover the

truth through science is a mystical faith that we derive from Plato.77

The second argument against freedom is the same argument he makes throughout: we can never be

free because “Humans have too little self-knowledge to be able to fashion a higher version of

themselves.”78 We are radically flawed and irretrievably deluded. We fantasise that escalators of

reason, knowledge and science can set us free, when in reality there is nothing that can be done to

change our rapacious human nature.

The possibility of meliorism One last point to consider is meliorism. Gray is often criticised for refusing to acknowledge that

progress is more likely to be incremental. As the philosopher A.C. Graying writes:

“The secular view is a true narrative of incremental improvement in the human condition

through education and political action. Gray thinks that such a view must of necessity be

utopian, as if everyone simplistically thought that making things better (in dentistry, in the

rule of law, in child health, in international mechanisms for reducing conflict, and so forth for

many things) absolutely had to be aimed at realising an ideal golden age to have any

72 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.41. 73 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.89. 74 John Gray (2002), ‘Faith in the Matrix’, Heresies, p. 55 75 John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.23. 76

John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.101. 77

John Gray (2002), Straw Dogs, Penguin, p.20. 78 Cited in Galen Strawson (2015), 'Review of ‘The Soul of the Marionette’, by John Gray', March 6, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/88d5944a-c1b6-11e4-bd24-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3Wtu2ah00.

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meaning. But it does not: trying to make things better is not the same as believing that they

can be made perfect”. 79

Meliorism is a much more modest goal than utopian re-engineering. All it requires is a dash of

reason, not the full cup, and it is not necessary for all of us to take a ride on the escalator of reason.

It is only necessary for a few key innovators to do so, and to be just effective enough in what they

achieve to make a little progress. The meliorists don’t claim that reason will cure us of our inner

flaws. They only say that we can use reason to make incremental progress.

Squeezing an admission out of Gray that a skerrick of progress has been made is hard. But if you

look closely enough, Gray never claims that progress is impossible per se. When pressed he will not

deny that incremental social improvements are possible. He will even acknowledge the possibility of

‘meliorism’. He is just careful to say that “gradual progress is often impossible”80 and his fall-back

position is that any progress we do make can never last.

For clarity, it’s worth quoting him at length:

“Let me try and be more precise. I don't deny that some states of human history are better

than other states. Europe in 1990 was better than Europe in 1940. I don't deny that. And I

don't deny that some programmes of reform have enhanced the lot of human beings to a

considerable extent. And peace is better than war, freedom is better than anarchy,

prosperity is better than poverty, pleasure is better than pain, beauty is better than ugliness.

But there is a another very specific belief that I would guess you subscribe to: the belief that

advances in ethics or politics can in principle become like advances in science in the sense of

being cumulative. This is the belief that there is nothing inherent in human life or human

nature to prevent cumulative improvement. We'll get to the point where there is no poverty

in the world, where there is no anarchy in the world. My view is that all gains in ethics and

politics are real but they are all also reversible and all will be reversed and often reversed

very easily. For example, I know many liberal humanists myself and I know that when I said

two and a half years ago that torture would come back, they were incredulous. That doesn't

tell me they are stupid. That tells me they are in the grip of a belief that makes such a thing

unthinkable. They have a narrative, a notion of stages. But when I look at history I don't see

any kind of thread, however tenuous, however sometimes broken. What I see is cyclical

change, cyclical transformation”.81

Pinker, on the other hand, is nowhere naïve about the prospects for human progress. He never

claims that our advances are irreversible, and he clearly states that “if the conditions reverse,

violence will go right back up”.82

79 AC Grayling (2007) 'Through the looking glass', July 3, https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/1423/through-the-looking-glass. 80 John Gray (2013), The Silence of Animals, Penguin, p.32 (emphasis added). 81

Laurie Taylor (2007),'Going nowhere: Laurie Taylor interviews John Gray. Progress is an illusion and liberal humanists are adolescent romantics. John Gray tells Laurie Taylor why he believes we're all deluded', May 31, https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/939/going-nowhere-laurie-taylor-interviews-john-gray. 82 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.361.

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Conclusion So, where does this all leave us? Having considered the arguments, it’s time to take stock and ask

ourselves: who is closer to the truth?

In the end, the gap between Gray and Pinker is not as great as it first appears. Both believe that

human nature is what it is largely as a result of millions of years of hominid evolution. Both accept

that deep within our nature are propensities which are irrational and violent. Both (though it takes

some prodding with Gray) accept that incremental progress is possible, including through the

application of reason. “Certainly unreason can be tempered by the hard-won practices of

civilisation, but civilisation will always be a precarious achievement”, Gray admits.83 Both

acknowledge the great danger from utopian schemes, whether based on ‘reason’ or some other

faith. “Gray, like his friend and mentor Isaiah Berlin, sets himself against all proponents of the grand

idea—of progress, of perfectibility, of the right and only way to live”.84

It is understandable but also unfortunate that Pinker hit on the idea of using historical data and

statistics to demonstrate what surely would be a most astounding discovery—that violence has been

declining, contrary to appearances. Unfortunately, the veracity of the quantitative claim is what has

attracted the most attention. The methodological squabbles over how many deaths should be

counted where and when, or whether the risk of nuclear war renders the entire proposition moot,

have overshadowed the simple, yet powerful fact that the obscene violence which Pinker shows was

once endemic in the Middle Ages has mostly been eliminated. As Pinker writes, “something about

mature, literate states eventually leads them to think the better of human sacrifice”.85

The idea that humans have a capacity to rise above their own animal nature, Gray reminds us, is

ancient. This doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea, and it is quite different to the idea that we can

change our animal nature. Plato famously said: “The victory over self is of all victories the first and

best”.86 The English biologist T.H. Huxley proclaimed that it would only be possible for humans to

make moral progress by combatting our evolved human nature.87 Pinker is surely right to suggest

that we can acquire a ‘second nature’, that we can use the escalator of reason, and Gray is equally

correct to remind us that we can’t change our ‘first nature’, making everything that we do that much

harder. But difficult as it is, human sentience remains the only ‘candle in the darkness’.88

Is Gray really against all this? I don’t think so. Despite everything that Gray says, he is not against

reason, or reasonableness, or civilisation, or politics, or progress, and certainly not life, or

‘happiness’. His main motivation is simply to warn us of the dangers of forgetting our rapacious

human nature, and to challenge our naïve, rationalist faith in the tools of progress. Leviathan,

reason, science, and knowledge—they can all too easily be turned against us.

83 John Gray (2014), 'A Point of View: The child-like faith in reason', July 18, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28341562. 84 John Banville (2013), ‘The Silence of Animals by John Gray – review’, February 15, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/15/silence-animals-john-gray-review. 85 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, p.136. 86 Plato, Laws, 1.626e. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0059.tlg034.perseus-eng1:1.626e. 87

Franz M. Wuketits (2009), ‘Charles Darwin and Modern Moral Philosophy’, Ludus Vitalis, Volume 17, Number 32, p.398. 88 Richard Dawkins (2003), A Devil’s Chaplain, Phoenix, p.13. See also Carl Sagan (1996), The Demon-Haunted World. Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books.

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“In calling belief in progress an illusion, I do not mean that we should—or could—simply

reject it. … The illusion of progress has sometimes been benign. … [But] whatever role it

may have had in the past, belief in progress has become a mechanism of self-deception that

serves only to block perception of the evils that come with the growth of knowledge”.89

Gray also genuinely believes that, for all practical purposes, it is impossible to resolve human value

conflicts. This is not to say that we can’t work out a best path forward, but he wants us to see that

the sheer variety of human ideals undermines the possibility of any final agreement. Because of

value-pluralism and the inevitability of conflicting human interests, Gray recommends a politics

based on modus vivendi, which he optimistically describes as “a reasonable political project for one

who sees the diversity of interests and ideals as the normal human condition”.90 It’s difficult not to

see in this Gray’s own post-Christian humanist project. Perhaps Pinker should have included it in The

Better Angels of our Nature.

Which is all very well, but we still have to answer the question that I posed, with the best of

intentions, at the start of this essay. Who is closer to the truth? The answer has got to be Pinker.

He is surely right that in certain areas of human life there has been a historical decline in violence,

even if his critics are right to point out the many qualifications. He is even more on-point to try and

identify the mechanisms that can explain the decline, and where it has occurred. Certainly, this

should be our urgent focus. Pinker is also right to say that we can use various mechanisms to ‘rise

above our nature’. All this is compatible with a nature that we cannot change.

Gray can’t show the impossibility of human progress, he can only warn us of the dangers. But Gray’s

goal, I suggest, is not really to have us give up the humanist project. The ‘contemplative life’ that he

speaks of is utopian, and itself derived from reason. Gray’s goal, I believe, is to prod and push us

into developing a more realistic humanist project, one which is self-aware, mindful of the traps and

pitfalls, more reasonable in its expectations and careful in its methods.

Gray’s is a vital voice and his relentless hammering just might save us from ourselves, if enough

erstwhile revolutionaries heed his siren call. But Pinker and Singer are onto something much bigger,

a path that we have only just begun to explore. All three thinkers make an extraordinary

contribution to our modern quest for answers, but Gray’s sacrifice, for me, is the more sublime.

“The atheist Gray wants us to reclaim the stories we have told ourselves and to understand

their true nature. What angers him is that today’s secularists refuse to acknowledge that

they also live by their myths. The secular myth he most despises is the idea of progress and

the belief that by purging ourselves of religion and committing ourselves to optimistic

rationality, we will rescue ourselves from tragedy. Gray thinks this humanistic eschatology is

more dangerous than its religious counterpart”.91

89 John Gray (2004), Heresies, Granta Books, pp. 4-5, emphasis added. 90

See John Gray (2007), ‘Reply to Critics’, in John Horton and Glen Newey (ed.s), The Political Theory of John Gray, Routledge, p. 224. 91 Richard Holloway (2013), 'Reviewed: The Silence of Animals by John Gray', February 21, http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/02/reviewed-silence-animals-john-gray.