How the Mind Works

Rating:
Summary: Amusing Read
Review: Very entertaining read, and provides an excellent overview of science/philosophy of the mind. It is clear that Pinker has read widely, and as he admits in the preface, he tries to summarize writings of those he has read.

Pinker is a little too opinionated for my taste - for example, he slams the critics of sociobiology without giving them a fair hearing, glosses over controversies in evolution vs creationism as thought there wsa nothing to discuss (not that I'm a creationait, mind you, but any true scientist should always remain open to the possibility that there are weaknesses in any theory), talks as though everyone's mind works just like his (ignoring the well documented differences in cognitive processing between verbal visual and kinestic thinkers), etc.

Overall, though, it's an excellent, eminently readable book.

Rating:
Summary: interesting book about how the mind Could! work
Review: I dont have much to add to the other reviews, only that if you want to know something about our brain, our mind, about how unique life is etc, this book is one to read, just like Chance and Necessity is, or the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, to give some examples.
His style of writing is, as a review put is, as scientific writing should be: witty, erudite, and clear. the facts, and his conclusion about them are good reading, and at the end it leaves enough space to make up your mind yourself. You will be sure not to agree with all in it, but you will definitely read some facts about human nature you never thought of like that before: and you keep them for the rest of your life, not bad for a few dollars!

Rating:
Summary: A synopsis of the synapses
Review: I despise and like this book at the same time. And for this reason, I give it 4 stars. I think those books that deserve less acclaim, are those that provoke no thoughts or emotions. In reading other reviews I realized that people more knowledgable about the field found this book mundane and certainly a regurgitation of previous knowledge. I found the ideas thought-provoking because they were new to me. But I can see where the work has a rather strong scent reminiscent of speculation. Which leads into why I don't like the book. Pinker comes off in his writing as the authority on well, his authority encompasses all. Everything that he writes about, is, in his bias opinion, clear-cut and certainly factual, while those who think otherwise are clearly wrong and moreover, ignorant and laughable. That writing style is certainly hard to swallow when you begin to wonder if because your thoughts differ from his, that you belong with this ignorant and laughable class. As the classic counter to atheist argument might go, this time in the direction of Mr. Pinker: If there really is no good in humans, and every action one might consider morally good is genetically programmed in hopes to pass along those genes, then why bother writing a book to explain this vile truth. Why not just get the pain of life over with and end it all? What's the point of going on? Where's my mom one might ask...and, why not? If you liked stripes you would too. And if you would too you might not like this book. Thank you for your time.

Rating:
Summary: Great Explanation of the Mysteries of the Mind
Review: I became interested in how the mind works as part of my research into the topic of the conscious web. I asked the question "what is consciousness?" and I figured out Pinker's book was a good place to start. Ray Kurzweil also quoted Pinker frequently in Kurzweil's book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" which I also loved. So although I just started with a single question I learned a lot more then I thought I would. I really appreciated Pinker's efforts to explain the mind as a series of interconnected processing units, where each processing unit needed to be understood from an evolutionary basis. He calls this "Natural Computation" and the concepts are very useful in explaining many aspects of the mind. I learned not just about models of consciousness being a model of the real world in our own brain where we exist in that model but also about topics like raising kids, dealing with family issues, emotions and the biological/evolutionary basis of love.

The book has been researched very well. This book has excellent notes and a large list of references for further reading.

My only criticism about this book is that Pinker sometimes draws on an unnecessarily large vocabulary, making his points difficult to understand in some parts. A little stronger editing might have helped here. How often do you use the word "palimpsest" in ordinary conversation? This is good if you want to expand your vocabulary but painful at times.

But all-in-all Pinker has done a great job explaining how the mind works. The title is correct.

Rating:
Summary: Empirical Science's take on Human Nature
Review: The title of this book is something of a misnomer. The book is about more than just the mind: it is about the entire human being, with special focus on the motivational complexes stemming, in part at least, from innate, genetic factors within the human organism. Pinker discusses human nature from the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology. "Our physical organs owe their complex design to the information in the human genome," Pinker argues, "and so, I believe, do our mental organs." Starting from this premise, he attempts to "reverse engineer" the innate characteristics of human beings, assuming that man's genetic endowment is shaped by natural selection. "Reverse-engineering is possible only when one has a hint of what the device was designed to accomplish," Pinker argues. And what, may we ask, was the human device meant to accomplish? Well, since most of the evolution affecting the human mind and human motivational psychology took place during the hunterer-gatherer stage of human development, the human device was engineered to spread its genetics under conditions affecting men when they lived on the savannahs in Africa. This curious thesis, which many will automatically dismiss as absurd, is, under Pinker's advocacy, far more convincing then one would assume at first glance. Pinker marshals a host of fascinating evidence which demonstrates that, whether his basic thesis is correct or not, it certainly cannot be dismissed as implausible.

But the real value of the book is not so much its espousal of the controversial theories stemming out of evolutionary psychology, but its brilliantly empirical description of human nature. From the very start, Pinker admits that his book represents "a departure from the dominant view of the human mind in our intellectual tradition, which [is known as] the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM)." According to the SSSM, human nature is largely the product of arbitrary cultural factors. Rejecting an innate human nature, SSSM goes on to conclude that social engineers (e.g., Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro) can make of human beings what they please. This point of view, which is seen as "progressive" and benign, is totalitarian in practice. As Pinker points out, "If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified."

The issue over whether human nature is innate is probably the most important question facing social theorists and political philosophers. Pinker's innate biological view of the human mind leads him to adopt what is essentially the view of conservatives and traditional Christianity: the view, in short, that human beings are limited in their moral and spiritual potential, that, in other words, they are tainted by their biological inheritance. Ironically, Pinker, a materialist, Darwinist and atheist believes in a scientific version of the Christian doctrine of original sin. Christians and evolutionists have long been at odds over cosmology, but on the nature of man, they more or less speak with the same voice. After more 500 pages of analyzing the scientific evidence relating to human nature, Pinker concludes with the following sobering assessment: "No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another." Pinker's book is important precisely because it refutes once and for all the romantic notion that human nature is essentially good. For this reason alone, the book must be regarded as essential reading.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks spirituality
Review: This book focuses too much on the material basis for our consciousness, without examining the spiritual drivers of our consciousness as given to us by God.

God created us in his image, so that we could love him as he loved us. He therefore gave us consciousness and language so that we could praise his name. THAT is how the mind, and spirit, works.

Rating:
Summary: Pinker and the Brain
Review: With the rapid advance of computer technology, one wonders how much longer it will be before we see a machine capable of duplicating the human brain. Will we see a "Data" or a "C-3PO" in our lifetimes? Or how about something slightly simpler like the "HAL-9000" from "2001: A Space Odyssey"? My personal opinion is that, someday, these things will be possible--though I don't see them appearing in the next 50 to 100 years.

With "How the Mind Works", author Steven Pinker endeavors to show us just how complex our brain (hardware) and the "software" that runs on it truly is. He does this by illustrating how incredibly difficult it would be to create a machine that could duplicate even the simplest of human mental tasks.

Take the simple act of seeing and recognizing an automobile. Such an event is so commonplace for us that we hardly even think about it. But try to create a computer that can do the same and difficulties immediately arise.

When you see an automobile, your mind must reference a kind of "object" library (computer programmers will see what I'm getting at here). An object such as "CAR" must have certain traits and characteristics associated with it--for example, has four wheels, carries people, has an internal combustion engine, travels on streets and highways. In this way, even when you see a new, one-of-a-kind, vehicle you will immediately recognize it because it has the traits and characteristics of the "CAR" prototype stored in your mind.

Now try to imagine a computer that can do the same thing. What if I were to show this computer a toy car? an abstract painting of a car? or a non-street-legal dune buggy? But this is just the beginning of "How the Mind Works." There's much more.

After establishing the amazing complexity of the human mind, Pinker goes on to explore how and why the brain evolved into its present state. It is this, second half, of the book that I found most fascinating. Borrowing from the fields of Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, and heavily from the pioneering work in "Evolutionary Psychology" conducted at U.C. Santa Barbara, the author will demystify all but a few of our human behaviors.

At times "How the Mind Works" is heavy going. But the reader with a hunger for scientific understanding of human nature will find it well worth the effort.

--COMPUTER ENGINEERING STUDENT

Rating:
Summary: Warm, fuzzy linguistics
Review: Yes, the human mind is a marvelous organ, surpassing all mechanical models that try to emulate its computational, creative, problem-solving genius. And its evolution is one, thanks to Pinker's lucid prose and familiar illustrations, we can appreciate and marvel at. But the question of how we can make our evolved minds better, not to mention prevent them from getting worse, is one Pinker's work persistently overlooks. Understandably, Pinker's sanguine style and fundamental optimism are received well by numerous readers, but if a mapping of the human mind becomes so broad it fails address the pot-holes and shifting grounds upon which the journey is made, its usefulness becomes dubious. Perhaps it's time for linguistics to move beyond its academic complacency into the realm of cultural criticism and the influence of the postmodern landscape on human consciousness.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking ideas but dull reading
Review: There are lots of stimulating ideas in the book. However, the computational discussion is too wordy / rambling. Discusses simple computational concepts in a boring detailed way with numerous illustrative examples. This forced me to skip pages often and the reading experience wasn't as pleasant. My masters thesis was in artificial intelligence 12 years ago - so, this opinion may be biased.

Rating:
Summary: No conclusions, but it is worth the reading
Review: Through the book you will find a lot of social and scientific topics (politics, economics, friendship, love, music, natural selection, neural networks, stereograms, etc.) and learn about them and their interrelationships. This could sound just good, but if you are not familiar with some topics, the text becomes somehow confusing and the you don't learn anything and, moreover, you could lose the main idea.

As for conclusions, however, you get no universal truth, but only the author's thoughts (as you were warned at the beginning of the book). So, excepting those somehow unclear parts, the books is a nice source of social and scientific topics related to the research on how the mind works, very well introduced or explained.

I expected more from the last chapter, The Meaning of Life. It started gathering some previous parts and it seemed good for conclusions, but indeed the analysis on "mind working" just continued.

As a simple comment, some sections of the book are for US readers or people that know well geography, history, movies and other topics of the US.