Rating: 
Summary: Ignorance about the brain abounds.
Review: Pinker is one of those rare scientists who seem to be able to stand on a mountain and take in the view of what is taking shape on multiple intellectual fronts.Most philosophers are gleefully ingorant about the consciousness and brain. And it causes them to make all sorts of absurd pronouncements and just-so stories regarding the nature of consciousness and it's "independence" from the brain. As Pinker's book helps to clarify, to talk of a consciousness outside of a brain is nonsensical (for an in-depth, layman's explanation of the brain and just how much consciousness is reliant on it, read "Descartes' Error" by Antonio Damasio.) And the brain is product of evolutionary forces. That's right - who you are and how you behave is largely biologically determined. Even your level of happiness is largley inherited. None of this should be a surprise to anyone who is not ignorant about the brain. The brain is who you are. If it is damaged, altered chemically, or stimulated, your thinking can be made to change. It's not a question of will or self control. Both of these can be damaged, as well. And just as people are born with different physical attributes, they are also born with different mental attributes. For the simple reason that the brain IS physical. If it were not for your genes, you could not think. You could not feel. You could not be conscious. Genes are wonderful things! This stance is not popular. But it is reality-based. And that is far more than can be said for the likes of the Blank Slate, Ghost in the Machine, and Noble Savage myths. So, kudos to Pinker for bringing the light of reason and actual knowlege of the human brain to the debate about the nature of the human mind (or, IOW, brain)!
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Summary: SWEEPING AWAY CULTURE-ONLY ORTHODOXY ¿ ALMOST
Review: This is a great book - well almost. In 24 punchy chapters, Pinker counter-blasts the culture-only theories of human nature that have dominated the social sciences over the last 70 years. Franz Boas and his students are often praised (or blamed) for having successfully decoupled the social and the biological sciences and thereby blunted the Darwinian Revolution of the 1860s. Pinker's book is the latest in a series that joins together what Boas did asunder. In the catacombs and labyrinths of academia, in the research labs and debating halls, in specialist after specialist journal, evidence from behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive neuroscience has been ushering in a counter-revolution in the behavioral sciences. Much of what Pinker ably pulls together is a far-ranging review of this research on children and family life, love and attraction, personality and temperament, religion, politics, and the arts. Time after time he shows how scientifically necessary it has now become to examine genetic as well as cultural influences. Pinker rarely meets a phenotype for which he can't find some genetic variance. But alas, Pinker then blinks and stumbles when it comes to race, "gender" (i.e., sex), brain size, and IQ. Early in the book, he explains in detail about how it was the political ramifications of the controversy over issues of race that undermined the Darwinian perspective in the 1920s and established what he terms the Blank Slate Orthodoxy whose stranglehold on the behavioral sciences he now hopes to break. Perhaps this is why when it comes to the topic of the "Black-White IQ gap in the United States," Pinker safely opines that, "the current evidence does not call for a genetic explanation" (p. 144) and omits telling us what this evidence is or what, if anything, is wrong with it. For Pinker, apparently, traits may run in families for genetic reasons, but not in families of families. Race is the glaring exception to his otherwise general rule that phenotypes require genetic as well as cultural explanation. Since Pinker is a cognitive psychologist, it is even more surprising that he doesn't give his readers a clue as to the latest research on brain size and IQ. ...High-tech, state-of-the-art MRI imaging studies reveal a 0.40 correlation between brain size and intelligence test scores. Other brain size studies show an average Black-White and male-female difference amounting to about 100 grams (the size of a quarter-pounder), favoring Whites over Blacks, and men over women. When Pinker does dare whisper of such forbidden truths, he quickly shouts out enough technical details about small brain parts (men also have larger "interstitial nuclei in the anterior hypothalamus, and a nucleus of the stria terminalis, also in the hypothalamus" (p. 347), whereas women have larger "cerebral commissures") that the central theme is drowned out by a cacophony of qualifications, caveats, and minutiae. He is silent about the average 15 IQ point difference between African Americans and Europeans, or the 30 IQ points between unmixed Africans in Africa, and Europeans, although these have been repeatedly corroborated by over 100 years of research on millions of people. He also skirts the evidence of the large male greater than female differences in spatial and mathematical ability, which may explain the comparable sex differences in brain size (even after adjusting for body size). One novel, braver message is Pinker's marrying of evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics. For the most part these disciplines tactfully avoided each other. Many evolutionary psychologists worry about being perceived as fellow travelers of behavioral genetics, some of whose disciples have, on occasion, carried out research on IQ, crime, and race. Some behavioral geneticists, in turn, dismissed the evolutionary psychology "science of just-so stories." Here, Pinker performs his greatest service to the behavioral sciences, advocating consilience over fragmentation. This book sweeps Blank Slate orthodoxy toward the dustbin of history. One only wishes Pinker had used a wider and stiffer broom.
Rating: 
Summary: Realistic Human Nature -- Positives and Negatives
Review: As a psychology professor, I support the current trend toward making psychology realistic rather than overly optimistic. I don't think we need to be depressed about human life, even though it is often a struggle (of individuality, culture, and biology). Dr. Pinker's long book is informative, yet also quite abstract. A realistic appreciation of individual differences in personality is the key to advancing psychology into the 21st Century. It is also the key to living well.
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Summary: emerging common sense of the age?
Review: This book should be required reading for every opponent of evolutionary theory of both the right and the left, including most of my colleagues in sociology. While not as compelling as many other more focused books on the topic, and adding nothing new, it is an up-to-date survey for anyone just catching up to the field. Pinker's central argument is correct, I believe, though there are plenty of particulars to disagree with. This is a book for a general audience, and is not a tightly presented piece of scientific research. Pinker reinforces one more time that while "racial" differences are mainly imaginary, there are indeed significant differences between the sexes. Of course this is no reason for paying women less for the same job, but it does contradict much feminist ideology. The chapter on politics is excellent -- Pinker echoes Singer's recent book "A Darwinian Left" by advocating a Tragic view of human nature that limits the possibilites for remaking society. Fear not, even if everyone understood human nature in evolutionary terms, there would still be plenty of room for argument, but perhaps the discussion would be more intelligent and the spectrum of possibility would certainly be narrowed. A strength of the book is to make clear that conservative, let alone fascist, politics are not a necessary consequence of applying evolutionary theory to human behavior. My main criticism is of Pinker's discussion of art. He is on a rampage against modernism and post-modernism, but does not seem to have the slightest appreciation of anything other than lowest-common-denominator products. It's one thing to point out why the bell curve is where it is based on our evolved nature, and I agree that there's plenty of art that seems designed only for shock effect and has no deeper or lasting worth. BUT, it would be a sad, sad day for all of us if artists started working only to please the center of the bell curve! Those of us who are partial to non-representational art, both music and painting, are not driven by status considerations alone. I, for one, would not be secretly happier if I was restricted to Top 40 radio, Norman Rockwell, landscape paintings, sit-coms and Harry Potter products. The evolutionary psychology crowd obviously has more work to do across the board, and more in some areas than others.
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Summary: Evolutionary Philosophy,,,Read SB or God by Maddox
Review: I have never read such a highly detailed book on human nature coming from Pinker. This book is a culmination of his past works, it does in fact rehash past books but investigates more sub areas. To me it looks as though Pinker decided to further his own studies and this is an update of original thesis. Also this edition covers why we resist or deny, Socially, what he had written in How the Mind Works. This is a good extention, however I feel one has to be very serious about this subject to enjoy it. Do not get me wrong on being serious, this book is superbly written, easy to understand, was edited well. The ideas put forth of Ideology and Philosophy do go further than most, I would recommend reading All of his prior works however before starting this, without that there is a lack of full understanding. I would like to recommend a good philosophy ideology book, similar, which I enjoyed more, SB or God.
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Summary: Unblinkingly Honest Account of Humanity and Its Discontents
Review: Armed with the truth that evolutionary psychology is correct, and that competing ideas about human nature (tabla rasa, noble savage, immortal soul) are wrong, this engaging book efficiently dispatches many of the intellectual demons, monsters, and lesser bogeymen of our time, ranging from dogmatic academics, to creationist ministers, to Pol Pot. Steven Pinker comfortably takes his place alongside the full slate of recent outstanding scientific authors such as Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson, Brian Greene, and Alan Guth. Perhaps Richard Dawkins said it most succinctly: evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Nevertheless, most societies are still dominated and oftentimes impeded or supressed by people who cling to discredited notions about human beings and the world they inhabit. Evolutionary psychology displaces the "God-of-the-gaps" from one of His last refuges: the human mind. In spite of a specific papal injunction against such knowledge (in the very document where John Paul II famously accepts evolution as a fact of nature), Catholic or other religious groups do not seem eager to support research aimed at proving that an immortal soul, genie, or some other magic controls our minds. [See ... "Theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."] With consciousness explained as a purely materialistic process, God could only live in two places, which may be expressed as the yet unanswered questions: Where does physics come from? How did life begin? But, we're working on answering these questions too. Books like Pinker's remind us why this is such an exciting time to be alive.
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Summary: Why people resist studying How The Mind Works
Review: If you have read Pinker's other books, especially How The Mind Works, you may find this one a bit of a rehash. If you are already convinced that he is on the right track, you may also find this one to be a little preachy. But don't get me wrong, I liked the book anyway. It covers much of the same ground as How The Mind Works, but instead of presenting the details of the computational/innate theory of the mind it discusses the social resistance to acceptance of that theory. If you just want an explanation of what the computational/innate theory of the mind is, you have to plow through a lot of other stuff and you never get as much detail as in How The Mind Works. But if you want to understand the controversy over that theory, this is your book. (Keeping in mind, of course, that Pinker is a player in that controversy, not a bystander in the traditional "objective journalist" sense.) The only thing that really annoyed me was excessive references to Hitler and Nazism. Part of that was inevitable, since many opponents of this theory have linked it to Nazi ideals. Pinker had to counter that directly. But it seemed like just about every chapter had some sort of explanation of how this theory opposes Nazism, Marxism, and other totalitarian philosophies. Enough already, we got the point the first ten times.
Rating:
Summary: Clear but Written for Inconsequential English Professors
Review: The book is a great exposition of modern scientific thinking and understanding of the nature of man--but it spends some time on topics that are entirely obvious outside of the humanities academia. Indeed Pinker gives them too much respect by honoring them with such a lengthy reply.
His other two books are much better.
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Summary: Methinks Pinker protests too much
Review: Pinker is at his best when he writes about linguistic sciences.When he treads other paths his writing and his thinking get somewhat less than brilliant. I can't understand why he devotes so many pages haranguing poor late Stephen Jay Gould, and why he insists on writing about neurosciences when it's clear, by his obscure phrasing and "garden path sentences "(read his masterpiece "the Language Instinct" for the meaning of this)that neurosciences aren't exactly his piece of cake. I of course agree whit him when he says that those who followed ideologies that assumed to reshape human nature and society brought terrible harm and suffering; but I still think there's room for improvement in the human mind,and that if the blank slate theory is wrong, so is wrong the fixed brain wiring theory. Most of his arguments are good, but, in some chapters like those on sex and gender, I got the distinct impression that he was "jewelling the elephant", to coin a phrase from Armistead Maupin. No,Mr.Pinker, he's not an anthropologist. He is a novelist that can teach you something about "fixed sex roles".
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Summary: Pinker popularizes without pandering
Review: If social science is going to make progress, than its practitioners are going to have to take this book seriously. They can't go on ignoring the fact that people evolved and that a vastly complex yet comprehensible human nature exists. This book explores the reasons why they have tended to ignore this seemingly unavoidable unconclusion. The best possible impact that this book could have would be to make social scientists realize that they shouldn't be entirely free to make whatever claims they want about human behavior. Such claims need to be made is falsifiable terms, need to be consistent with the other natural sciences (especially evolutionary biology) and their acceptability needs to be wholly evidence-dependent. What social scientists have tended to do, as this book shows, is just say whatever they think their audience will want to hear and make sweeping claims based on minimal or no evidence. These claims go unquestioned because most academics so badly wish they were true, and the possibility that they're wrong seems unacceptable. Anyway, Pinker advocates that social scientists should worry less about what they wish were true and more about what is true. He also shows that the truth doesn't need to have the pernicious consequences that some social scientists fear.
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