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How the Mind Works (Paperback)
by Steven Pinker
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Nonfiction |
| Market price: ¥ 198.00
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¥ 178.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Great book about how the brain works although some sections ramble a bit. |
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Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Pub. in: January, 1999
ISBN: 0393318486
Pages: 672
Measurements: 9.2 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA000569
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- Awards & Credential -
The National Bestseller (in North America) |
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- MSL Picks -
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. (From quoting Scott MacLeod, USA)
Target readers:
General readers
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Steven Pinker is one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind. He has won several major awards for his teaching and his scientific research. Pinker is director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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From the Publisher:
In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to write in the New York Times Book Review, "No other science writer makes me laugh so much… [Pinker] deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him." The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. Pinker rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection, and challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting.
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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). |
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. |
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. |
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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