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Summary: Steven Pinker's 'How the Mind Works' Précis
Review: Steven Pinker begins his explanation of "How the Mind Works" arguing that the mind is best understood in terms of a computational model and that, in part, by reverse engineering the mind one can understand many aspects of cognition. He also examines why aspects of cognition, such as consciousness, knowledge, meaning, free will, self, morality, etc. still remain beyond the purview of cognitive science. Pinker identifies natural selection as the process which shaped the mind; subsequently, history, cognitive and social psychology, and human ecology are the most important factors which for him continue to shape the mind. The significance of the book lies, in part, in Pinker's differentiation of what reverse engineering can show from what is still beyond the tools of cognitive science. Pinker suggests that the reason biologically unnecessary aspects of human behavior such as language, art, wit, music, literature, etc. are so significant to people and remain problematic may be because scientists don't yet have the cognitive equipment to solve them and suggests that consciousness and free will, for example, may ultimately remain elusive aspects of the mind.By arguing that "the mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life, in particular, understanding and outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people," (21) Pinker rejects most other views of the mind that have held sway in the last century. By insisting on the complexity of the mind, Pinker claims that a) thinking is a kind of computation used to work with configurations of symbols, b) that the mind is organized into specialized modules or mental organs, c) that the basic logic of the modules is contained in our genetic program, and d) that natural selection shaped these operations to facilitate replication of genes into the next generation (21, 25). Pinker thus shows that the computational model of mind is highly significant because it has solved not only philosophical problems, but also started the computer revolution, posed important neuroscience questions, and provided psychology with a very valuable research agenda (77). By examining mental processes which are reverse-engineerable, Pinker lays the groundwork for examining which cognitive processes aren't yet understandable. For example, chapter 4, "The Mind's Eye," describes how the mind's vision process turns retinal images into mental representations, how the mind moves "splashes of light to concepts of objects, and beyond them to a kind of interaction between seeing and thinking known as mental imagery" (214). By describing a specific modular process, Pinker shows how this modular process fits together like a puzzle, as well as with other parts of the mind. Taken together the chapters thus also show what processes, such as sentience and especially consciousness, are still not readily explained. Pinker asks not only how scientists might understand "the psychology of the arts, humor, religion, and philosophy within the theme of this book, that the mind is a naturally selected neural computer" but also why they are so resistantly inscrutable (521). He suggests that the arts "engage not only the psychology of aesthetics but the psychology of status," thus making the arts more readily understood by economics and social psychology (521). According to Pinker, consciousness, too, resists understanding. He asks: "How could an event of neural information-processing cause the feel of a toothache or the taste of lemon or the color purple?" (558) thus highlighting the important 'Gordian-knot' question of causality in consciousness. In suggesting that such questions are difficult because Homo Sapiens' minds don't have the cognitive equipment to solve them, "because our minds are organs, not pipelines to truth" (561), he emphasizes the significance of natural selection in shaping the mind to solve matters of life and death for our ancestors (356) and leaves open the possibility of explaining consciousness at a later date. Pinker's book is significant, therefore, because it explains both how many aspects of the mind work, as well as what we don't yet know about how the mind works. In his conclusion, Pinker offers only tentative answers about why scientists don't understand consciousness, for example, and leaves open the possibility that we may never understand it.
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Summary: Excellent book that elucidates many areas of the human mind.
Review: "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker is one ofthe best books available today about the human mind. It is wideranging, extremely well written, and has an thorough bibliography. The book gives an excellent introduction to cognitive science, which explores the human mind in terms of the composite fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. One can read the entire book, take notes, and learn as much in a week or two as one would in a semester college course(s). The central ideas of the book involve the computational theory of mind and the theory of evolution. Pinker argues that the mind is a modular, information processing, natural adaptation. In reading about current brain research, I must say that it is amazing how much scientists can learn about the brain simply from close observation of animals, children, brain injury patients, twin siblings, and computerized robots. Pinker also includes important topics such as human emotion, social relations, and the arts. ...Pinker clearly and emphatically addresses the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy involves deriving "ought" from "is". That is to say, the way things were is not necessarily the way things have to be or should be. He leaves plenty of room for human freewill and ethics. To sum up, an excellent book that elucidates many areas of the human mind.
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Summary: Digging Minds!
Review: How the mind works or say better 'Digging Minds' - the author reveals the research on Minds and his survey is all 'Ahs' and 'Oops' coz as we read the book, Steven Pinker is cheering thru the chapters on Human brain. His arguments are quite unique esp. the Love chapter is all a 'ga-ga emotional swings' The powerful emotions override circumstances with ease and a glad heart is resourceful in finding joys! Mind itself is a 'Thought Factory' and it can make a heaven or hell out of it. The author digs into psychology - neuroscience effects and how the senses perform. With indepth views, the book might seem misleading at places but to sum up, the authors leaves room for the'free' flow of thoughts. Signs of anxiety, fear, insecurity is emotional outbursts seen in some people which is totally controlled by the thinking process of the brain. Hearing, speaking, thinking are all mind triggered emotions and even memories relate to Mindful thoughts. The book is a good read on Mind functioning and if one is interested in Psychology reads, this is good Pick!
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Summary: "The best book ever written on the human mind"
Review: Steven Pinker is Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the renowned books, 'The language instinct' (Penguin, 1995) and 'Words and rules: the ingredients of language' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000). In this book, described by one reviewer as 'the best book ever written on the human mind', he puts forward a general theory about how and why the human mind works the way it does. Yet it is not a ponderous book; it is beautifully written and full of jokes and stories. Pinker marries Darwin's theory of evolution to the latest developments in neuroscience and computation. He shows in detail how the process of natural selection shaped our entire neurological networks; how the struggle for survival selects from among our genes those most fit to flourish in our environment. Nature has produced in us bodies, brains and minds attuned to coping intelligently with whatever our environment demands. Housed in our bodies, our minds structure neural networks into adaptive programmes for handling our perceptions. Pinker concludes, "The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life." Our beliefs and desires are information, allowing us to create meaning. "Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal." Pinker writes that the mind has a 'design stance' for dealing with artefacts, a 'physical stance' for dealing with objects, and an 'intentional stance' for dealing with people. "Causal and inferential roles tend to be in sync because natural selection designed both our perceptual and our inferential modules to work accurately, most of the time, in this world." With this down-to-earth kind of explanation, there is no need to invoke mysterious intangible powers: "We don't need spirits or occult forces to explain intelligence." Pinker sums up the recent amazing developments in neurobiology and cognitive science. This book, like those by his colleagues Daniel Dennett ('Darwin's dangerous idea' and 'Consciousness explained') and Richard Dawkins ('River out of Eden' and 'Unweaving the rainbow'), should be required reading. They are all Darwinians, but then why shouldn't they be? It is just like saying that all physicists are Einsteinians nowadays, or that all poets and playwrights are Shakespeareans, or that all osteopaths are Stillians. Their books make Karl Popper, so hostile to Darwin, and Californian gurus like Fritjof Capra, sadly outdated.
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Summary: Illuminating information from neuroscience
Review: Not since Daniel Goleman's, Emotional Intelligence published in 1995, have we been the recipients of meaningful insight into the way the mind and emotions work. If you are interested in neuroscience these books are a must. If you want practical information on how to make the MOST of your mind, emotions and every situation, read Optimal Thinking: How To Be Your Best Self too.
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Summary: Red yet? Tow truck two!
Review: Ok, so it's not like Mr. Pinker drew a road map of our more-tangled-than-Christmas-lights neuron web, explaining the actual physics of the functioning mind. That's good! If Pinker could write such a book, who in their right mind (thank you for your courtesy laugh) would want to read such a bland text? Do you enjoy reading your car's manual? No! But, if you didn't already know, you probably would like to know the logic, the ideas, and the purpose behind the handy glove box or the mysterious distributor cap. This book is not a great scientific achievement because it enables us to build a mind out of various items found between our couch cushions. It's a great scientific achievement because it helps explain the window through which we all experience our world in a fun and easy to read text that omits trite details. Well studied scientists, geniuses, and PHD's might find this book a waste of time. Good! Go write text books or something. But if you're an average person interested in a introduction to the mind that natural selection built, buy this book.
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Summary: Three pounds of hamburger
Review: Great book about how the Brain works but should be titled, "How the Brain Works". Without the Soul, there is no mind. The Soul IS the mind operating within the brain. Three pounds of hamburger with ten trillion neurons flashing is still not MIND!.
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Summary: Families not Species?
Review: I enjoy Mr Pinker's books - this is not the first one I have read.A nd yet I find myself balking at some of it. Indeed I have a personal characteristic, not unique of course, that separates me from a lot of what is said here. A physical characteristic, not an emotional one. Consequently I keep finding myself challenging, defending, objecting ..... Previously I had read 'Why Sex is Fun?' by Jared Diamond and during this book I realised that the title is totally misleading. It suggests that sex was developed by a conscious entity who thought - 'How can I make this work? I know, I'll make it fun.' For me this is back to front. We are here - our species - because sex just happens to be fun. If it were unpleasant or a chore we probably wouldn't be here. So here we are again looking at evolution and trying to justify human behaviour as somehow driven by genetic imperatives - as if the genes are trying to meet objectives. For me, this is crazy. The genes are the accidental vehicles that keep the species going, but they don't do it by design. And midway through the chapter on families in Mr Pinker's book I realised something new. All we can tell about our existence from evolution is that the species is still here, and something about the way we do things has contributed to that. But Bonobos are here too and they behave in an entirely different way - despite that, they are successful in terms of evolution. But as soon as Mr Pinker talks of the individual male wanting to promote his genes in advance of another man's I know the argument has gone off the rails. We are now talking about - not persistence of the species (which is demonstrable), but persistence of the particular family (which I suspect is not demonstrable). As far as the species is concerned what difference does it make whose genes are being contributed as long as there is variety. OK, men do not like to be cuckolded but I don't think that that is an evolutionary matter. The psychological studies need to look elsewhere. I recommend this book because it will get you thinking, not that I agree with it necessarily. Recommended other reading:
'Why is Sex Fun?' by Jared Diamond One that you might like to consider, but I hated:
'The Red Queen' by Matt Ridley
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Summary: Don't start here if easily bored!
Review: Pinker is no doubt knowledgeable in the subject matter. He also seems to be an avid student and conscientious worker of the cognitive science field. And that's just fine. But as an author he does a poorer job. Its not that the book is a bad one. It is actually quite good, but for the wrong reasons. As a popular science book (that is what it is) it shouldn't have been so long and densely packed with details. It defeats it own purposes. As an "evolutionary logician" Pinker should have made the process short, written his "programmatic declaration" (that is what the book is) in a logically concise propositional way, a number of if-thens with few but select examples, and kept the long version to his graduate or postgraduate students. Thereby he could have focused more effectivelly on convincingly narrating his point of view. As the book stands now it is too cram-packed with information to make for a pleasurable read. The book is a pastiche of disparate elements taken from all over and thrown together without a modicum of integration, no red-line, not even a thin one, no narrative, no nothing, nada. Just occassional talk of evolutionary theories and computation (which doesn't really qualify as a red-line in a 600-page mammoth). In that Pinker does the same mistake as Marvin Minsky, one of his predecessors, in one of his most popular books, The Society of Mind. A true waste of resources (one has to hope these two scientists have come up with functioning and useful computer applications that compensate for their heart breaking acts). The end result is a hard to follow, incoherent read, saying much about everything but very little engaging about the mind. Perhaps this is how the mind looks under the microscope (though I doubt it) but in that case Pinker should have done his readers a favour and wrapped it up a little nicer. Writing popular science books is not a contest in honesty. There is no shame in sparing the innocent... A bigger, epistemologiacally more troubling problem is the fact that Pinker's complex modular view of the mind comes "dangerously close" to approximating the complexity of the "real thing" thus loosing its heuristic value for all those mortals not endowed with exceptional, transhuamn, intelligence. To his credit one ought to mention that this is a general problem of much current science; what the philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright has called the "intelligibility problem of modern science". Unfortunately for all of us science's booming complexity and specialization is generally coupled with an exponential decline in it's intelligibility and it's heuristic value. Science is increasingly taking-off into realms ordinary people cannot or do not want to visit. And this time not due to snobbyism or elitism but due to it's accelerating perplexity (which shouldn't be mistaken for "value"). No wonder that New Age is so popular among ordinary people and the public utility of science is increasingly questioned by journalists and activists. Is this the kind of science we want? Science is really turning hyperreal - an image more than a real something - and Pinker, though he dislikes this, can't really help it (though he makes an admittedly brave attempt to resist it). Within psychology and neurology this trend has been critisized among others by Jerome Brunner (one of the pioners of the cognitive revolution), Oliver Sack and Raymond Tallis. According to the critiscism the modularty of mind that Pinker advocates divorces psychology from ordinary experience and its decontextualized stance fails to take culture seriously. The central human preoccupation of meaning seeking and meaning construction is thus generally lost in the persuit of a technological "quick fix". This theoretical tradition, the modular brain as an information processing device, has its roots in the adoption of the computer as a metaphor of the human mind. This tradition has been fruitful, but it is also flawed. Thus Pinker may at some point, with the help of a his collegues, succed in building an intelligent robot, but in that case his endeavour will not be intelligible to the wast majority of humans, a quite disturbing scenario with only a privileged (?) elite knowing the truth (?). The book is not helpful for the practically inclined either. What can you do with this veritable info-shower? Probe or test your intelligence? Counsel a friend or relative? Effect behavioural change? Build a little robot? Due to its general layout the book is not even good for enlightening and guiding a computer scientist trying to replicate the many computer simulations of brain functioning Pinker refers to. Its only merit is as a kind of pocket encyclopaedia of the mind, albeit of the spicier kind (Pinker likes to speak his mind). In conclusion: being knowledgeable in a field of technical expertise, unfortunately, seldom translates into being a good writer. Pinker is not an exception. The reader looking for something more well writen should look elsewhere. Two very pedagogical expositions of the workings of the mind are Varela's et al "The Embodied Mind" and Damasio's "The feeiling of what happens"; they have a red line and a narrative structure which makes their reading worthwhile even if one disagres with their conclusions. However Pinker's book could be of interest to social science students wanting to dig deeper into the subject of human intelligence or place their psychological queries in a somewhat larger context.
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Summary: Better on evolutionary psychology than on the mind.
Review: I found the title somewhat misleading as the greater part of this book reports on the findings of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology is not a new subject to me, but I found Pinker's chapter on the arts totally new and intriguing. The first part of the book explains Pinker's view on how the mind works. Pinker is at his best employing a fluent, discursive style with references to popular culture as likely as to scholarly works. He sometimes digresses, but hell, I finally understood what deconstructionism was. Unfortunately, while this discursive style works with evolutionary psychology, something more is needed when discussing neural nets, algorithmic implementations of artificial intelligence and the like. Pinker realizes this, but does not do a particularly good job. He does have a fine chapter on visual perception, and on just how much processing and innate assumptions are involved, but even here I would have benefited from more recapitulation. Pinker tends to give short shrift to ideas he doesn't hold, and has a truly absurd argument to buttress his claim that the only reason sex was an evolutionary success was to fight disease. More importantly, he dismisses any extended discussion of consciousness as not fruitful (cf Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens).
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