Rating: 
Summary: Enormously entertaining
Review: Pinker is a tremendously exciting thinker with a gift for analogy and pattern recognition that rivals, say, John Updike, Camille Paglia, and Dave Barry at their best. His gift for illustrating the most abstruse workings of the mind with dead-on-the-money examples from the Godfather, or The Simpsons, or the Rolling Stones seems to annoy many (humorless and not really-as-smart-as-they-think-they-are) people no end. Too bad for them. Another reason for the sniffy tone of many of these readers' comments is Pinker's political incorrectness. He considers the Standard Social Science Model of thinking about humanity to be a disaster for American intellectual life. ... The one weakness in Pinker's approach is that he tries to restrict the science of human nature to just how all human brains are similar. He's not as self-assured (or bigoted) about this in this book, as in his previous bestseller "The Language Instinct," but he still acts as if studying how brains differ is totally boring. Of course, he can't actually NOT study mental differences becaus similarities and differences are the warp and woof of information. If we were all the same, you couldn't get a grip on how our brains work. Thus, vast amounts of the data he uses about how (supposedly) all brains work comes from comparisons of healthy brains to stroke-victims and other tragically defective brains. Further illustrating this point, the last third of his book deals mostly with sex differences. ... Psychological research has been divided for over a century into the followers of Wundt (like Pinker), the "experimental psychologists," who emphasize how brains are alike versus the followers of Galton (like Arthur Jensen), the "differential psychologists," who emphasize how brains differ. This artificial divide is finally collapsing: see Jensen's new "The g Factor" for a detailed account of how the "differential" IQ researchers are using traditional ! "experimental" laboratory techniques like PET scans. The future belongs to the synthesists who are equally concerned with both similarities and differences. ... The problem with this, of course, is that humans tend to differ in somewhat predictable patterns. (1) It's now respectable in the harder sciences to discuss sex differences: in fact, evolutionary psychology largely consists of the study of sex differences. (2) However, the study of sexual orientation differences, especially between gay men and lesbians, who differ radically on dozens of traits remains largely off limits. (3) The great taboo, however, is the 3rd dimension of difference: race. (Note how Jensen's masterpiece has been almost utterly ignored.) ... The greatest untouched territory in the study of human nature are the fascinating correlations between sex and race. For example, a topic that psychology has yet to examine in any formal fashion is nerdishness, even though the public is fascinated by it at present (no doubt due to the rise of Bill Gates). Clearly, this is a heavily male trait. Clearly, it also differs by race with Northeast Asians being more nerdish on average than whites who tend to be more nerdish than West Africans. Just as clearly, though, African-Americans tend to be more stereotypically male in musculature and personality than whites and especially) Asian-Americans. ... The great choice confronting Pinker is whether to honestly examine race, or to limit himself to just marginally pushing the envelope of what can be politely discussed. ... Steve Sailer
Rating:
Summary: Excellent: Thought provoking, informative, and entertaining
Review: This is the best read I've had in a long time. His style is lively, and his knowledge base is vast. His insights into the possible reasons we think and act the way we do are well thought out and generally based on research by colleagues in many disciplines. The one caveat is the text's unclear organization. Whether or not you agree with every point, you can stretch your mind with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Castles Made of Sand
Review: An interesting and plausible approach to understanding the currently incomprehensible. "How the Mind Works" is a well-stated and fun to read exposition of the ineffable. Be wary of brains expressing certainty about the organization and causes of themselves. Making statements with confidence about this fledgling subject reveals something unsettling about brain function. Look for Pinker and others to re-architect their castles as the next wave of understanding sweeps across neurology, physics, computing, evolution and the glue that binds these disciplines into a consistent flow of ideas.
Rating: 
Summary: Still fails to elucidate the phenomona of consciousness
Review: I read this book in high hopes that it might make a strong case that consciousness is an emergent phenomona. This book, like all the other materialist explanations to date, still fails to explain the actual phenomonology (the root) of consciousness. David Chalmers book, "The Conscious Mind", makes a better case that consciousness is better explained as a fundamental ,not an emergent property. On the other hand, Pinker does an outstanding job of describing the *structure* of consciousness and its evolutionary origins.
Rating:
Summary: This book is too long, but has some redeeming features.
Review: Stephen Pinker's "How The Mind Works" attempts to provide a "cohesive picture" of how humans think by presenting "theories that strike [him] as offering a special insight into our [human's] thoughts and feelings, that fit the facts and predict new ones and that are consistent in their content and in their style of explanation" (ix). Unfortunately, his presentation of cognitive theories falls short of the superb treatment of language presented in "The Language Instinct". "How The Mind Works", while it has moments of clarity and occasionally sparkles with the same zest present throughout "The Language Instinct", is too long and disorganized to provide a cohesive picture of cognitive function. Pinker believes in a heavily computational, modular model of the mind. In other words, he is claiming that there are pieces of our minds which are specialized to perform certain tasks (modular) and that they perform these tasks by calculation (computational). Pinker is also an evolutionary psychologist; he believes that all the components of cognition are a product of evolution. Thus, he claims, one can explain the way our minds work today by examining the environment in which we developed those minds. Our minds are engineered to ensure our body's survival and our genes' propagation. At the same time, he does not subscribe to the theory that we are not responsible for our own behavior. Rather, he is interested in pointing out how our minds work, and how our genetic baggage can influence our decisions and actions. Pinker's argument for the computational theory of the mind is compelling. His analysis of the evolutionary economics of the modular brain is particularly intriguing. He shows that the easiest way to accomplish a complex task is to divide it up into several simple modules, which are somehow co-ordinated to achieve the end-goal. It is not feasible to have modules which are so highly specialized that they are too expensive to use. R! ather, it is "cheaper" to have low level tools which can be used to accomplish multiple complex tasks. Pinker also illustrates how evolution could have shaped even the most complex of cognitive functions. Opponents of cognitive evolutionary theory argue that partial organs would hardly benefit an organism, so all evolutionary advances must have been accomplished via large random mutations. Pinker refutes this claim, mostly with his compelling description of how, in a computer simulation, an eye remarkably similar to a fish's evolved out of a couple of photosensitive cells in just 400,000 generations (164). The cells in question were allowed to undergo small, undirected mutations in size, thickness and refractive index. At the beginning of "How The Mind Works", Pinker carefully points out that his book "is about how the mind works, not about why some people's minds may work a bit better in certain ways than other people's minds" (34). This sets the stage for his discussion of how the human mind works on average, or how the (hypothetical) average human's mind works. In "Hotheads" and "Family Values" (Chapters 6 & 7), however, he describes individuals making decisions. He describes how emotional and sexual urges help to shape decisions that people make on a personal level, while ignoring specific circumstances which should influence an intelligent individual using his/her computational mind to the fullest. For example, he argues that raiding other tribes for wealth and wives would benefit the men involved, even if some of them died. This, he claims, is why women never engage in war - "their reproductive success is rarely limited by the available number of males" (515). His claim rests on the premise that each individual derives benefit from a successful raid, except for the poor sucker who dies, and he illustrates this with the use of individual behavior. However, he disregards all of the other information which could be relevant, ! such as whether or not you are physically imposing, already have as many wives as you can support, cannot run as fast as your counterparts. In short, he argues for the individual case, but assumes that all individuals are average. The problem with this line of thought is that Pinker is no longer explaining how we as a species tend to behave on average or describing which behavior patterns have been most successful and hence are more prevalent today. Rather, he is claiming that genes influence an individual's decisions. This is in direct contrast to his comment in Chapter 1 that if his genes don't like his behavior, they can go jump in a lake. Pinker also suggests that the reason young men, and especially poor young men, tend to live dangerously is because their genes somehow know that they don't have much chance of surviving to full maturity. Hence, they should get all the thrills they can, sow their wild oats and die happy, perhaps even with descendants from all that casual sex. Is he suggesting that if they do manage to reach maturity, their genes will somehow mutate into stable stay-at-home genes which will then prompt them to be contented with a middle-aged wife and 2.5 kids? Pinker's argument falls flat. In his obsession with evolutionary psychology, he fails to give the environment enough credit for the influence it has on human behavior. How The Mind Works is as much or more about the influence of evolutionary psychology on human cognition as it is a review of theories of cognition. For amusement and readability (as well as an amazing stock of controversial party topics!), I recommend "Hotheads" and "Family Values", although it is in these chapters that the most serious weaknesses in Pinker's argument are revealed. For the reader who wants an overview of evolutionary psychology and a description of the computational, modular theory of mind, I recommend "Thinking Machines", "Revenge of the Nerds" and "The Mind's Eye". Keep this book on! your coffee table and delve into it sporadically; small doses of Pinker are both amusing and enlightening.
Rating: 
Summary: Really fun to read and thought provoking!
Review: It was really interesting to read most of the stuff he mentions. I began to see and look at the functions of my mind in a different light after that book. Now I appreciate it (my mind) even more
Rating:
Summary: make it past the background, you'll see some good stuff!
Review: This is a weighty volume, both in kilograms and in content. Try not to be "put off" by the first couple of chapters -- they are pretty intense, with research findings and facts from the fields of neural networks, combinatorics and psychology. If you read only one chapter, make it "Family Values". I found this chapter to be fascinating. It really explained a lot about the motivations behind various behaviours. Overall, I think that Pinker has a lot of good things to say.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is in error, and not worth the price
Review: It is rare for a book of such ambition to be exposed as mistaken, and in the very moment of its publication, but clearly Terrence Deacon (The Symbolic Species) has a much clearer understanding of how the mind works. I enjoyed Pinker's first book (The Language Instinct), but this time around he bit off much more than he could chew. I believe Deacon has exposed Chomsky, Minsky and Pinker as terribly mistaken people. In particular, Deacon's detailed and comprehensive refutation of Chomsky's LAD seems unanswerable to me -- Deacon points out that there is no way that evolution could have produced any generalized LAD, and Chomsky has always refused to discuss the topic. Throughout this book, Pinker makes fun of people with "antiquated ideas," and seems not to realize that his own dumb idea of "the brain as a computer" is now getting to be about fifty years old.
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff, too long!
Review: Some interesting and thought provoking parts, but could have been written better (Shorter). I thought he was going to pull together (ya know- synthesize) many of the ideas at the end. He doesn't (or maybe I was sleeping during that part). Pinker occasionally writes at great length about "accepted" ideas, and then passes right over those that are more complex and questionable. That is frustrating and so is his "humor". Would I recommend this book to a friend? Probably not.
Rating:
Summary: Pinker takes the next step
Review: How the Mind Works takes the next step in the ongoing revolution of evolutionary psychology, furthering the ideas presented in On Human Nature, The Adapted Mind, and Darwin's Dangerous Idea. This book is a well-written synthesis of a complex subject, therefore requiring 565 pages, but Professor Pinker pulls it off in my opinion. His use of every day life examples places this book above works by Dennett, as does his less inflammatory view of other's opinions. If you want to learn this subject very rapidly, this is the book to buy, and I suspect this will be the author to watch the next ten years and deservedly so.
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