Yes, all of the building blocks of morality can be found in the components of the human genome, but those building blocks are no more “morality” than the firing of motor neurons are the game of baseball. Until one learns, through extended social training — for children we call this “growing up” and for societies “culturally evolving” — neither baseball nor morals are possible. Instead neurons exist (vice baseball) and a predisposition to rudimentary socialization (vice morality), and, as a result, Mr. Pinker’s certainty that his discipline wields authority in the matter of morality is more than questionable.

The Times Magazine article does not seem to me to be one of Pinker’s better. To use another analogy, he ingests a half-pound of sugar, a stick of margarine, two cups of flour, four raw eggs, etc., and tells us what a cake tastes like. I like to think that I might find the time to point out some the inconsistencies that result later in another comment.