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BLEAK_DINER

                                             August   31, 2012
                                             December  6, 2013

Joseph Carroll reviews Steven Pinker:
"Steven Pinker’s Cheesecake For The Mind" (1998)
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Carroll_C98.html


Carroll makes the point that
Pinker unfairly reviles music
by comparing it to narcotics
and the dreaded cheescake--

   Music has no comparable
   deleterious effects.        (Presuming one stays away from
                               the Starlight Vocal Band).


                                          PINK_CHEESCAKE
   Strangely, Carroll concurs with
   Pinker's assessment of Cheescake
   as in the same class as heroin,     Will *no one* stand
   a curse on the health and           up for Cheesecake?
   well-being of the Republic---       What is this country
                                       coming to?
                                                             We might as
                                                             well start
        Carroll: "Rich deserts offer a                       calling 6th
        purely sensual stimulus. They                        Avenue
        appeal only to the taste                             "The Avenue
        buds. They have no intrinsic                         of the
        emotional or conceptual                              Americas"
        content, and they convey no                          and be done
        information from one mind to                         with it.
        another."

        Cheescake does not communicate?
        does not convey a message?
        What diners has this guy been
        hanging out in?


   He makes the point that a world         Carrol:
   without art takes you into the
   territory Dicken's depicted in          " ... it seems very likely that
   "Bleak House"...                        people raised with no exposure
                                           to music, art, or literature
         (There's a circularity            would be psychologically and
         joke here, I think:               emotionally stunted, that they
         using literature in               would be only marginally capable
         defense of literature,            of developing in normal
         which shows that                  ways. They would probably have
         literature has serious            great difficulty learning to
         purpose.)                         deal with their own emotions or
                                           to relate to other people with
                                           any sensitivity and
                                           flexibility. Their capacity for
                                           responding in creative ways to
                                           the demands of a complex and
                                           changing cultural environment
                                           would probably be severely
                                           impaired. "



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