[vii]

Steven Pinker the secular Harvard psychologist also addresses the facticity of fixed psychological norms from a strictly materialist point of view in his critique of modernism and postmodernism, specifically with reference to the existence of a universal standard of beauty: "Once we recognize what modernism and postmodernism have done to the elite arts and humanities, the reasons for their decline and fall become all too obvious. The movements are based on a false theory of human psychology, the Blank Slate...Human nature did not change in 1910, [vii] or in any year thereafter...Art is in our nature--in the blood and the bone, as people used to say; in the brain and in the genes...In all societies people dance, sing, decorate surfaces, and tell and act out stories...art is deeply rooted in our mental faculties...Regardless of what lies behind our instincts for art, those instincts bestow it with a transcendence of time, place, and culture...Though people can argue about whether the glass is half full or half empty, a universal human aesthetic really can be discerned beneath the variation across cultures" (The Blank Slate 404-411). In chapters 15, "The Sanctimonious Animal,' Pinker addresses the existence of universal moral standards, albeit slippery at times, but nevertheless existent. Pinker cites a growing movement, even a revolution in the arts, against postmodernism. Graduate students are speaking out, critical of Foucault, Derrida, Butler and other postmodernist authors, in spite of the fact that critics are calling these students "a bunch of crypto-Nazi conservative bullshitters" (416-17). Karen Wynn Professor of

Psychology

and

Cognitive Science

at

Yale University

has recently shaken the worlds of psychology, sociology and ethical studies with her work on 6- and 10-month old infants. Wynn has investigated early social preferences and judgments, demonstrating the ability of babies to distinguish helpful from unhelpful characters in simple interactions enacted by hand puppets. Over 80% of the time, infants prefer the good helpful characters to the hinderers. On her web site Wynn states as one of her research interests: "We are exploring the origins and development, in infants, toddlers and preschoolers, of moral concepts such as 'good' and 'bad.' What are the conditions that influence infants and young children to judge certain acts and individuals as good or right, others as bad or wrong?" (Wynn). Her husband and collaborator, Paul Bloom says:" What we're finding in the baby lab, is that...there's a universal moral core that all humans share. The seeds of our understanding of justice, our understanding of right and wrong, are part of our biological nature. The results make it clear to Wynn and her colleagues that children have an innate, structural awareness of good and bad" (60 Minutes). Bioethics philosopher

Peter Singer

wrote that these studies “have upset the previous wisdom, associated with such stellar figures in psychology as

Sigmund Freud

,

Jean Piaget

, and

Lawrence Kohlberg