How the Mind Works

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Summary: Facinating insight into ourselves
Review: Excellent and thought provoking read. A fountain of knowledge, conjecture and insight into the inner (and not so inner) workings of the human mind and psyche. I found very little that tripped my fallacy meter and a great deal of science mixed with common sense that made this book feel important as well as entertaining to read. There is quite a lot here and I found that at times I had to take time to digest this only a few pages at a time. But I heartily recommend this book to anyone who's curiosity about our inner workins' needs more than pop psychology to fufill it. I have learned much here and it's an entertaining read as well. You may not like all you learn here but you will come away with a much greater understanding of the human condition and your place in it.

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Summary: A real page-turner of heavyweight ideas
Review: The two leitmotifs of this stimulating book are "the computational theory of mind" and the theory that the mind is an array of "mental organs" that have evolved through natural selection. Kind of like Babbage and Turing meet Darwin and Dawkins. Pinker pulls together material from many sources to illustrate these theories and weaves them together into a compelling overview of the mind.

The computational bits left me feeling out of my depth at several points, but also feeling reassured that this wasn't science lite. And while the evolutionary bits were less challenging - and easier to read - they offered more than enough food for thought.

Apparently some people find the computation plus evolution theory controversial. Others find the ideas old hat. And Pinker himself seems to rub plenty of people up the wrong way for various reasons. Myself, I find the arguments fresh and convincing, and Pinker very enjoyable to read. He covers an awful lot of ground with great gusto, he packs the detail in and makes his points with wry humour.

"How the mind works" is a book to read once to get the gist and a second time to get the detail.

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Summary: Waited all my life for this book!
Review: This book is great, probably the best work of nonfiction I've ever read. The breadth and depth are astonishing, the clarity is remarkable, the presented facts and theories are relevant and powerful enough to substantially enhance my life. I've read a great number of books about the mind; this is easily the best, the most exciting, greatly surpassing my previous favorite, Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. I plan to read it again, right away.

This is a sort of textbook of the functions of the mind, but a textbook with all the dreadful boring stuff left out and just the exciting, useful stuff left in. He discusses and illuminates such diverse subjects as stereograms (magic eye pictures), vision in general, art, human relations, music, emotions, religion, sex, humor, philosophy, you name it, it's in there. This is stuff I can use. This is stuff I've been longing to know. There's not that much that's original with the author; rather, it's an overview, a compendium, a synthesis of recent thinking in many fields. Read this book!

It is long (it needs to be), and it does go into more detail than I wanted about a few things (3, actually), but even the "excess" detail proved interesting and worthwhile. The style is very clear and readable, and often funny. The general theory or foundation is cognitive psychology and evolution.

I previously read this author's The Language Instinct, and although I finished it, I didn't find it particularly illuminating or memorable. This book is better.

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Summary: Philosophic critiques anyone?
Review: Once upon a time this was called metaphysics. Can anyone tackle evopsych from formal philosophy?

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Summary: Very engaging and though provoking¿hard put it down!
Review: I did not agree with everything Pinker stated in his book and I wonder whether even Pinker completely believed what he wrote. At times (more toward the end of the book) he seemed to be spewing little more than interesting speculation. Nonetheless, I loved reading this book, if not for it's authoritative conclusions (of which there are plenty), than for its though provoking discussions.

In the early chapters of the book, Pinker is meticulous in describing the information processing theory of mind-the book is worth buying simply for this chapter alone. However, there is much more to his book than this. In a most engaging style which Pinker seems to have mastered, he describes the extraordinary complexities involved with seemingly ordinary things such as identifying object in our visual field and moving about our environment.

I also appreciated his writings on "Psychological Correctness" where he is effective in separating moral dilemmas from scientific ones. Furthermore, in the section entitled, "Get Smart" Pinker writes about the fallacy in thinking that intelligence is somehow the necessary culmination of evolution. I particularly appreciated this section. He approaches it with authority and humor-at times I was laughing out loud.

As the book progresses, it is no less entertaining, however it is far less authoritative. Pinker puts forth some of the most interesting speculation, some of which makes sense and some of which is tenuous at best. This did not detract from my enjoyment of this book, however. If you take these sections for what they're worth, you can value them as though provoking ideas, instead of any kind of rigid scientific theory.

Overall I loved this book!

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Summary: The sociobiological mind
Review: This is an easy to understand yet witty account of how evolution shaped the human mind, although the mind is considered more so from a sociobiological viewpoint than a neurological one.

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Summary: A Stimulating Book
Review: The book spends a lot of time and effort comparing the human brain to a computer system. However, the author makes it clear that the brain is importantly neural and not linear. It is very helpful to look at his theories on how the brain uses experience too come too good answers without using conscious logic. While science may currently or in the future dispute the comparison to a computer system, it helped me develop some understanding of how the brain works. If you don't understand how computers. software, input devices and artificial intelligence works there may be times when you miss the point. This is not a self help book. It is probably not a book you can draw a lot of conclusions from but it does stimulate a lot of possible insights. The book is far too wordy. I want to know the subject not the author. There must be a better book on the subject for the average intelligent reader, but I have not found it.

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Summary: very little substance
Review: I bought the book based on the reviews here and I am very disappointed. I found myself reading many pages and still can't get any new insight out of it. How could this book get all these wonderful reviews? I am amazed.

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Summary: Not for those who REALLY want to know how the mind works
Review: This is an unfortunate introduction to the topic of mind and brain.

I have been a researcher in neurophysiology and cognition, and currently am a researcher in artificial intelligence. When I picked up this book to read, I was expecting great things, since Pinker has such a strong "public" reputation. After struggling to find real substance in the book (I read the first 3 chapters and then about 1/3 of each of the remaining chapters), I became curious about what other reviewers had said about it. It was soon clear that there were two camps: those who loved it (five stars) and those who thought it was shallow, misrepresentative, glib, or even pseudo-scientific (1 or 2 stars). Most of those who found it excellent (the vast majority) seemed to be generally unfamiliar with the field, while those who disliked it were usually very familiar with the field.

For the uninitiated or laymen readers, it appears to be a very entertaining and stimulating experience, but I believe it is very unfortunate that the breadth of treatment by Pinker is taken for a great intellectual exercise. On the contrary, he actually says very little of substance about how the mind works, as the informed disappointed reviewers have pointed out. It seems to be mostly a scattered rehashing of old and not particularly illuminating ideas in the field.

I like many other researchers am concerned about conveying the findings in our field to the general public and potential young scholars. But there is a trend in the consumption of science (and knowledge in general) in this society which I find disturbing. We have become consumers of knowledge without serious reflection. We are hooked by books that convey fascinating facts, but little in the way of careful thinking and reasoning, without which these facts have little useful grounding. The result in the case of this book is a long string of "anecdotes" about "what kind of things" minds do without almost no description of how the mind actually works. For those interested in a more meaningful but more intellectually demanding work, I suggest Dennett and some of the other authors cited by previous critical reviewers.

This area is one of the great last frontiers, but one still largely unconquered. Honest researchers would agree that we have only discovered the very tip of the iceberg, and meaningful discoveries are very unlikely to come easily. Any other portrayal does an injustice to this very challenging area.

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Summary: How Pinker's Book Works...
Review: ...brilliantly! I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to compile this book. Pinker uses the computational theory of mind and evolutionary biology to dismantle the most difficult philosophical, psychological, cultural, and biological problems in existence.

This book contains countless "Aha!" moments. I particularly appreciated the sections on sex and love. I thought, "so that's why women act as they do!" And the analysis of arts and entertainment: I mused, "Oh, that's why I like music!"

The author's style is incredibly concise, entertaining, and smooth. He forgoes the verbiage and gets right to the heart of humankind's oldest questions. I love his use of relevant real-life examples.

I can see why "How the Mind Works" draws so much criticism. Pinker explicitly states that he is against the Standard Social Science Model ("there is no human nature, it's all culture and environment"). In addition, he never relies on magical thinking, religious sentiments, or the appeal to tradition.

However, Pinker respects the feminist, the religionist, and many others. His (often borrowed) ideas apply to everyone with an interest in improving themselves, helping their loved ones, and understanding humanity in general.