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How the Mind Works (平装)
by Steven Pinker
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Nonfiction |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Great book about how the brain works although some sections ramble a bit. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 9 items |
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Kirkus Reviews (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
With verve and clarity, the author of The Language Instinct (1993) offers a thought-challenging explanation of why our minds work the way they do. Pinker, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, synthesizes cognitive science and evolutionary biology to present the human mind as a system of mental modules designed to solve the problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors in their foraging way of life, i.e., understanding and outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people. He brings together two theories: the computational theory of mind, which says that the processing of information, including desires and beliefs, is the fundamental activity of the brain, and the theory of natural selection. He suggests that four traits of our ancestors may have been prerequisites to the evolution of powers of reasoning: good vision, group living, free hands, and hunting. He believes that human brains, having evolved by the laws of natural selection and genetics, now interact according to laws of cognitive and social psychology, human ecology, and history. He considers in turn perception, reasoning, emotion, social relations, and the so-called higher callings of art, music, literature, religion, and philosophy. (Language is omitted here, having been treated in his earlier work.) What could be heavy going with a less talented guide is an enjoyable expedition with the witty Pinker leading the way. To get his message across he draws on old camp songs, limericks, movie dialogue, optical illusions, logic problems, musical scores, science fiction, and much more. Along the way, he demolishes some cherished notions, especially feminist ones, and has some comforting words for those who struggled through Philosophy 101 (solving philosophical problems is not what the human mind was evolved to do). |
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Fabe (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
How does a bicycle work? Perhaps that's too complicated since it needs a rider to be in a state of working. Then, how does a windmill work? Yes it needs wind, but let's take the wind for granted here. Also, let's lay aside the knowledge there are different types of windmills all designed by different people. Let's assume we know one when we see one. So how does it work? We are immediately confronted by style and method and purpose. There are many ways to describe the workings of a windmill. Is any one enough? Are all descriptions necessary for truth? And what do we mean by "work" anyway?
If thinking about a relatively simple mechanical device raises so many questions, how many more are raised by thinking about the thinking thing itself - the mind? Why does thinking about how the mind works make predicting the lottery each week seem plausible? Why is "mind" so hard to pin down?
Kudos to Steven Pinker for taking this on in such a pleasurable, readable, thought provoking way. As he says in the preface, this account is a bird's eye view of how the mind works, a survey, It is both for the specialist and the thoughtful layperson.
As a survey the book is broad but the access to it is specific, Mr. Pinker says, "...the mind is a system of organs of computation designed by natural selection to solve the problems faced by our evolutionary ancestors..." He then elaborates adroitly for the next 565 pages. This book is engaging and thought provoking. I recommend it to you. Since you read this far in a review, I am sure the book itself will be of interest to you.
I wrote much marginalia in my copy of this book, often taking a different position and questioning assumptions. My one outstanding argument with Mr. Pinker comes from a statement he makes near the end of the book, "Psychologists and neuroscientists don't study their own minds; they study someone else's." In the margin I wrote, "Too bad, they should." By this I meant that eastern traditions of contemplation, reflection, and meditation provide tools for studying the mind. These tools would be a welcome addition to western science. |
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Marc Cenedella (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Unlike most reviewers, I come to How the Mind Works after reading Blank Slate, which is by far the superior work, in what are two very similar themes. This volume could as well be entitled "How the Persona Works" as it delves very little in the science of the mind. This is not an introduction to neuroscience, but rather is much more focused on the psychology of social interaction and knowledge acquisition. I suppose I was hoping for a more structured scientific statement of how the brain is composed chemically, designed genetically, and structured systemically.
In a series of sections, Pinker somewhat dis-connectedly jumps through findings from psychology and brain science to illuminate interesting problems. I found the opening sections - on areas like the mind's eye and how the brain is a thinking machine - far less interesting and compelling.
Pinker describes the brain as a machine that has costs (in tissue, energy, and time) and confers benefits. Knowing where the gold is buried in your neighborhood - and whether it's broadly in the northwest quadrant, or specifically underneath the flowerpot - improves your position because it reduces the physical work required to unearth it. That one bit of information allows 1 man to find the gold which would have taken 100 if the digging was done indiscriminately.
There are some very nice thought experiments in this section:
"What if we took [a brain simulation computer] program and trained a large number of people, say, the population of China, to hold in mind the data and act out the steps? Would there be one gigantic consciousness hovering over China, separate from the consciousness of the billion individuals? If they were implementing the brain state for agonizing pain, would there be some entity that really was in pain, even if every citizen was cheerful and light-hearted?"
Each species evolves to fill an ecological niche based on what's available - and humans have taken the cognitive niche, the utilization of a highly evolved symbolic brain to solve problems, and that enables us to "crack the safe" of other species / food sources. "Humans have the unfair advantage of attacking in this lifetime organisms that can beef up their defenses only in subsequent ones. Many species cannot evolve defenses rapidly enough, even over evolutionary time, to defend themselves against humans." Our cognitive process has evolved to be successful in manipulating this physical world and thus much of our thinking is metaphorical in the sense that we organize our thoughts about intangible things "in love", "full of it", "hold it against me" in the conceptual frameworks of space and force.
So the first half of the book is largely a qualitative assessment of how we process information, analogize, and come to conclusions. Pinker walks through the implications of the limitations of our cognitive abilities (again, I would've liked to see more explanation of those limitations in a scientific framework) and what that means for our ability to know, think, and believe.
My favorite sections were toward the end - Hotheads and Family Values - where the implications for social behavior really are the science at hand. Particularly interesting is the section on how anger and rage may have evolved to improve our ancestors negotiating position - if you look crazy and deranged, perhaps it is simply better to accede to your demands. Or how love - an emotion that you cannot to decide to have, and so cannot decide not to have - provides a more credible form of mate acquisition and pairing than any contract or negotiation.
Replicating creatures will help relatives if the benefit to the relative, multiplied by the probability that a gene is shared, exceeds the cost to the animal, that gene would spread in the population. Nepotism broadly defined, then, is another evolutionary strategy, and a successful one. Genes "try" to spread themselves by wiring animals' brains so the animals love their kin and try to keep warm, fed, and safe.
He cites the work of Trivers, who has worked out how the varying parental investments in an offspring (one ovum, nine months, and default child care provision vs. two minutes and a tablespoon of genes) create gender-based mating strategies.
Pinker is quite tactful in slaying the bugaboos of the politically correct, but does ultimately succinctly: "These kinds of arguments combine bad biology (nature is nice), bad psychology (the mind is created by society), and bad ethics (what people like is good)."
A good book is one which throws off another half-dozen additions to the reading list, and Pinker here has me buying new tomes covering everything from Tom Wolfe's critique of white guilt to the latest analysis of people's economic behavior to a history of fashion.
How the Mind Works is worth a read, and I certainly did enjoy it. Nonetheless, there is very little here that you won't find stated more clearly, forcefully, and comprehensively in The Blank Slate, and I would recommend you read that book first. |
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Keith Douglas (MSL quote), Canada
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Strengths of Pinker's work are his engaging style, his breadth of coverage and his summarizing of much research. Alas (as many reviewers have pointed out), the book has a few flaws.
The most glaring one is the computationalism section. Pinker attempts to defend the notion that brains are computers. While this was orthodoxy in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, it is somewhat less popular these days. This reviewer still thinks the approach has merit, but Pinker does not do justice to this issue.
Nor, realistically, could he - the book is long enough as it is. Arguably, the book could be then done in two volumes: one on computational cognitive psychology, and one on evolutionary psychology, with each drawing on the other volume as needed.
Another issue which is important for popularizations but not for academic volumes is the question of materialism. A perusal of the other reviews shows that materialism offended / turned off many readers. While this is the metaphysical position necessary for scientific research, many members of the public may not realize it and need to be brought up to speed.
This yields another point: Pinker's tome is intended as a popularization - but it does at times flirt with being an academic review, or a textbook. This makes some of it seem a bit unfocused.
Finally: Evolutionary psychology is a bit underdeveloped for the reasons also pointed out by many reviewers - it does not make much contact with neuropsychology. This is unfortunate for the field, but in my view does not detract from Pinker's volume which is summarizing. Taking the book as a monograph would definitely result in this being a limitation. |
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Lee Say Ken (MSL quote), Singapore
<2006-12-29 00:00>
As a layman (even though I was trained as an engineer), I was quite ambivalent when faced with the ultimate purchase decision for this book, especially after I have read most of the editorial & readers' reviews on the net. I was really intrigued by the fact that many readers took heavy pot shots at both the author & his book. My decision was further compounded by the fact that the book was thick - over 600 pages - & the apparent level of complexity, judging from my random five-finger test.
However my deep personal interest in understanding brain science & the curiosity streak in me finally drove me to buy the book.
The first half was quite an easy ride for me as the author offered a general model to explain how & why the mind works the way it does. This is despite the fact that the writing was dry & monotonous in most areas, witty & crisp in some areas & cram packed with seemingly irrelevant information. The second half was a tough ride for me as the author touched on the implications of social behaviors.
Frankly, I am not disappointed by the book even though I am still puzzled by some parts of the book. My own personal assessment of the book is that it is an intellectual smorgasbord of disparate, multi-disciplinary scientific topics/facts (e.g. natural selection, artificial intelligence, neural networks, economics, biology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, family values, feminism, emotions, etc.) which probably make my reading somewhat difficult, especially towards the second half of the book.
At the end, I have really enjoyed reading this book, particularly in terms of what I am looking for in the first place. I also like the author's extensive notes and large reading lists.
The most productive learning experience for me is a better understanding (may be I should say another perspective) of visual perception. In fact, in Chapter 4, the author has dedicated an almost entire chapter (from page 214 to 242) to the perception of random-dot sterograms (or 3D visual illusions). As far as I know, this is the only brain book (after discounting Bela Julesz's book) that I have come across that touches on this wonderful topic, which also happens to be one of my pet subjects.
On the whole, & from my personal perspective, this somewhat wonderful book definitely gives a reasonably good coverage on the intricacies & idiosyncrasies of the human mind, in spite of what the author had admitted in the preface: "First, we don't understand how the mind works..." |
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Ethan Hein (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
It seems from reading over the reviews that your response to this book depends heavily on who you are and what your background is. I'm not a scientist, but I have a strong general science education. The book was recommended to me by a neurobiologist friend. I went in looking for a good general overview of the subject matter written by someone with a good prose style, and that's exactly what I got. If you have a general liberal artsy science grounding and want to be pointed at some new lines of inquiry, the book is terrific. I think Pinker does a better job making potentially dry subject matter exciting than just about anyone. Very few of the ideas in the book were completely new to me, but I hadn't encountered them all between two covers before and I very much enjoyed watching Pinker draw connections. It's especially interesting to compare this book to the Selfish Gene, which Pinker refers to quite a bit. Richard Dawkins is more concise and clear, but has such a gratingly obnoxious and condescending authorial voice that I find it distracting. Pinker, on the other hand, is a treat to read; it's like sitting at a table with an old friend. Some scientist friends of mine have complained that Pinker speculates too much for their tastes and tries to overextend his Darwinian ideas. Fair enough, but Pinker is careful to warn the reader when he's speculating and when he's summarizing the results of actual research. I felt like I had room to think critically about his arguments while he was making them. The book is very clear about its intentions and its limitations. If you're looking for a highly focused argument backed up by hard data, this book isn't it (The Language Instinct does that better.) If you're looking for Evolutionary Biology for Dummies, this also isn't it. Think of it more as a big tray with lots of intellectual hors d'oeuvres on it, with the bibliography serving as a guide to restaurants where you can get the full meals. I'm glad I read it and will read it again - even if Pinker is dead wrong in all of his arguments, he's a model prose stylist and very good company as an authorial voice. I'll leave it to the experts to pick over the factual and logical holes in the book; meanwhile I think it's well worth the lay reader's time and effort. |
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Fu Lichao (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
To paraphrase from preface's the famous Dr. Noam Chomsky's (a personal hero) suggestion regarding our ignorance, we do not have any idea how this vast mystery called the mind could be solved. I have read this book the year it first came out (1997) and many times over since; should one still believe that thoughts, feelings, beliefs, meanings or ideas that all generated from this wonderful gold mine we called the mind can ever be understood? Dr. Pinker served as a wonderful tour guide to simply and elegantly point out some salient features and functions of the mind that we, I mean any non-psychologist, take for granted every day. I use my mind every day. (My wife and co-workers might want to argue otherwise, but they are wrong! I do think on a daily basis.). Yet I don't have any clue on the inner workings inside my own brain. Is the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descarte right when he proclaimed "I think therefore I am?" What insight and understanding have we gain regarding our mind since Descartes time? Another words, do we have any better understanding how thoughts and ideas are generated and processed in our mind? Dr. Pinker, now at Harvard and a giant in this field, do not have the answers. As a matter of fact, he was not even sure all or any of our current understanding and guesses would later proven to be true. However, he has painted an overall picture on the state-of-art research on cognition. Oh, the book. It has eight chapters with interesting and enticing titles and he tried (I think and hope) to tickle readers' imaginations and challenge our mostly unproven assumptions and beliefs. For example, under the standard equipment chapter, rationality and decision making serve as a frame work to discuss the complexity of our mind. He used the working definition of intelligence (i.e. the ability to attain goals by assessing obstacles along the way and modify one's action to reach that point) to illustrate that we use our desires (i.e. the latest big screen Sony TV) and use our beliefs (i.e. if I work extra 50 hours per week to generate more income) to increase the chance of achieving that result (i.e. watching the Final Four basketball games on SONY big screen TV). Yet is this stimuli (vivid and beautiful live college hoops on TV) and response (working extra hours to generate estimated 5000 dollars of income) due to thinking or is this just a result of a physical response from a sensory input? Do we endlessly shop for junks we cannot possibly need because of a physical response of a sensory stimuli and not due to brain activities at all? Perhaps endless charges on credit cards of the mall rats have nothing to do with the minds or intelligence but a mere knee-jerk response to stimuli. What about the molecular/cellular level of the brain? Can we understand how the mind work if we exam and understand how each cell in our brain work and therefore how the mind work? From page 99, Dr. Pinker stated from the mathematicians Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts that neurons have one purpose in life: "add up a set of qualities and compare the sum to a threshold and indicate whether the threshold is exceeded." Are you joking me? With a description like this, it sounded more like a description of a computer than a living breathing cell let alone a functional neuron. Suppose we have a complete and perfect understanding of a neuron on a cellular and molecular level, as he pointed out in the next few pages it is the interconnectiveness (my own invention to summarize the vastly complicated neural networks) that might be more important than any single cell. Another words, perhaps thoughts, ideas, imagination, emotions and other abstraction generated from our mind might be the results of these "supercomputer" networking. This conjuncture might be completely wrong but interesting nevertheless. What about complexity itself? Can the fact that we are the product of millions of years of natural selections and therefore the complexity of any organ in our body including the brain is resulted from million years of functional and adaptive survival? It is beyond imagination of my limited mind (no pun intended) that perhaps I don't have adequate brain power to understand my mind? So why should I or any one care how my mind think and why my mind think a certain way? A mental life is the result of my mind, and it is utterly unexplainable in most cases. Why certain stimuli upset me to the nth degree and only at certain time and space? Is my mind too limited or incapable of overcoming those undesirable yet almost unavoidable negative feelings? Why can I be peaceful and happy like I want to be every time I am sitting in traffic idle for hours on that big parking lot we called the 210 freeway in Los Angeles? Dr. Pinker has no answers for my agony or a way to relief my mental anguish. He only gave me a clue as to the possible explanations and ideas. I keep this book close to me at an arm's reach every time my mind fails me (more frequent than I like now days and I am only 36 years old) and I re-read it over and over for its shear beauty, audacity, and clarity. Unquestionably an authorative guide to my or any one's mind. |
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Mike Drake (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The objections levied against Pinker in other reviews here (that he's "arrogant," etc.) seem to me based on a misunderstanding of Pinker's intended scope. The question Pinker addresses is: How does a mechanism do the mind? Pinker presupposes mechanism, and he assumes that the mechanism is the physical brain rather than an immaterial substance (i.e., a "soul"). He does not purport to argue for these presuppositions and assumptions. And just why should he? Popular metaphysical allegiances notwithstanding, scientific explanation is conventionally naturalistic; no one complains that the effects of angels are given short shrift in stellar dynamics, for instance. That in mind, to say that supernatural aspects must be taken into account in the case of mental dynamics is (without further argument, anyway), special pleading.
As for the book: Pinker does an excellent job of informing one's intuitions about how mental competencies can be captured by mechanical means. Pinker feels, reasonably I think, that showing how such heterogeneous competencies can be mechanically instantiated demystifies the mental, and in turn suggests how the brain actually works.
My only quibble (and probably the main quibble of metaphysical dualists) is that Pinker waits until late in the book to state clearly that his book is not concerned with the classic "hard" problem of contemporary philosophy of mind, that of sentience. He should have stated that right up front. |
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R. Jose (MSL quote), The Netherlands
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The book is more about how the brain processes information and stores it etc and doesn’t really explain the emotional / feelings aspects of the mind. There are quite a few sensational chapter titles like Good Ideas etc which doesn’t really live up to the titles. There are times when you can turn pages after pages with out knowing where it is leading , and ends up actually leading nowhere! Nevertheless the book is a treasure box of ideas and very thought provoking. Gives some fresh perspective on evolution (though Billy Bryson does it better), cultural evolution, mechanics of eye sight , some basic neurobiology (which could have been more detailed) etc. He does touch a lot of human behavior (interesting), but falls short explaining them in a satisfactory way (disappointing). You can better appreciate the book if you are a computer literate as it does draws lots of parallels between the working of a brain and programming concepts (recursions, pointers, OO:D Java, C++ anyone?). Also presents some beautiful concepts on mind development of babies. Nevertheless the sensationalism in titles are a bit too much and I wouldn’t take what ever Steven Pinker says at face value and bear in mind that what ever is presented is just a theory, sadly the book can do better at conviction. I would recommend this book to some one looking for lots of new ideas on human behavior, wants a peek into how a human brain might be working but does not expect a ready made answer. This book definitely must be followed by more specialized books if you really want to get an idea of how the mind works. |
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1 Total 1 pages 9 items |
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