I think this a great way of addressing a widespread misunderstanding about genetics, biological evolution and human thought & behavior.

Slight background story: I was having a discussion with a guy on goodreads.com within his comments on his review of Why I Am Not A Muslim and eventually it came to this:

Myself: "It’s a categorical mistake to think this about biological evolution. To put it bluntly: our genes are selfish, but we are not (not necessarily, unconditionally so at least)."

Him: "One More...

I read all bio-determinist arguments, no matter how sound their science, as a mandate to return to the 50's - those halcyon days when men schnoockered their secretaries while women bought canned foods and tended the young. Nonetheless, I loved this book. The early chapters, especially on the computational theory of mind, are incredible. Pinker is just unbelievably detailed and the linguistic spin he brings to the discussion of cognitive development is a great dimension. The later chapters are mo More...

A very good book, albeit not the quickest read ever.

I’ve read a few popular science books and have been disappointed when they seem to rely more on anecdote than science -- ok, fine, what I really mean is I can’t stand Malcolm Gladwell. How the Mind Works certainly feels much more solidly founded in science while still maintaining the how-science-fits-into-real-life perspective of a popular science book.

It’s not a perfect book. Given the enormous breadth of the topic that Pinker is attempting to More...

This takes me a long time to finish this book. Probably because I decided to leave this book at home and only read this at night.

First off, Steven Pinker is as brillant as ever. He explains a lot of about our minds, and how common sense is not common. He compared the human mind with machine computation, and see how human could design computer to appear to be thinking, when it fact is it not.

The part that explain how Artificial Intelligent works is great. The general or generic response would giv More...

Very interesting, well-written, and comprehensive. I appreciated the overview of both computational and evolutionary psychology in one tome of a book; computational psychology is pretty much awesome, and though I must confess that I skipped some of the technical examples in an effort to prevent my brain from breaking, Pinker's writing was for the most part clear and explanatory. I learned a lot!

I would be interested to find out whether any of the specific evolutionary theories have become passe More...

"http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1289334.html[return][return]I was really disappointed by this book. Pinker starts out by claiming that he will explain the origins of human emotions, aesthetics, and belief in the context of the latest findings of evolutionary and psychological research. He does not really succeed in doing so. It is a succession of moderately interesting research reports, linked together with a glue of neat one-liners (mostly other people's), but without really coming to a killer c More...

In order to understand ourselves and others in a meaningful and accurate way, we need to be informed on how the human mind works. Steven Pinker lucidly explains what we can know about how the mind works and why it happens to work the way it does. The explanations he presents are supported by fascinating experiments and observations from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, biology and anthropology.

Reading this book requires a fair bit of grinding, but I think that most people who persist will More...

Pinker’s book How The Mind Works is a very interesting book for those people who are interested in the science of the mind, like psychology or neuroscience. The only thing I could say was a downfall is how long the book is; reading this book took a lot of time but other than that I would totally recommend it. This book makes you think; why do memories fade? What makes us laugh? Why do fools fall in love? Why do we need robots when we are the actual living things that have the ability to read?
Th More...

A good book for many new facts, ideas and theories, but jumpy and without radical new conclusions.

The title of the book is a misnomer. The author frequently gets excited about explaining evolution, whether in organs, thoughts or behaviours. He tries to justify these wanderings by vaguely linking to the mind but if there is any central theme in the book, it is less related to the workings of the mind than justifications of evolutionary theories.

That said, the book's rich details are exciting for More...

A daunting book for the casual reader. I found most of the chapters individually readable, interesting, often controversial. But, there were few transitions from one theme to another, which I found distracting. Steven Pinker's overall thesis is that the mind is a neural-based computer that reflects the results of evolutionary psychology - meaning that the basis of much of what we do and why we do it has its roots in our historical hunter-gather origins and how we have evolved (through adaptive, More...

The beginning sections of this book on consciousness, visual perception, cognitive structure, and how the structure of language can illuminate the way that the brain actually processes information are excellent, and worth the price of the book right there. In particular, I don't think you will find many more interesting discussions on how seeing works than Pinker's description of why so many people are frustrated by Magic Eye diagrams (personally, I've always despised them, and now I know why!). More...

Brilliant book. I can't recommend it enough. Lucid and readable.

The computational theory of the mind is just great. It makes so much sense, and is much better than some of the other views of how it works, e.g. what I see as the false dichotomy between reason and emotion.

From why people do silly things, to a fascinating chapter on how the mind sees. He often describes some of the different views, and then tells us which he prefers, all backed up with excellent evidence.

I get so tired of evolut More...

Very interesting. 20-30 years from now, I think most people will understand that there's nothing "magical" about the "mind", the "soul", religion, art, men, women, or any of the other sacred cows that continue to hold back humans from understanding themselves.

How the Mind Works was published back in 1997, but I didn't encounter any of the points that Pinker made in High School or Collage, up until 2000. Pinker focuses on a "computational theory of mind", saying that the mind is a complex paralle More...

The book does not lack good qualities, but I generally dislike the technique of argumentation that is too often characterized by poor proof backed by a certain arrogance towards alternative explanations. The chapter on the sexes is particularly shoddily presented. The "proof" that Pinker refers to when trying to back his claims that (simply put) evolution and innateness alone explain the differences between the sexes when it comes to attitudes to sex (the male hunter/gatherer has logically a gre More...

'How the Mind Works' is an ambitious book. Pinker addresses an insane medley of topics: if it pertains to the mind in any way whatsoever, it's fair game. This variety of topics discussed is the books greatest strength, but also it primary weakness.

Firstly, the bad: this book isn't clearly connected by an overarching thesis. I suppose everything has to do with 'the mind' - though this is debatable, as there are long stretches where you'll be prone to forget this book is supposed to be about 'how More...

Another Stephen, the late Stephen Jay Gould, is the hero of this book for me. Gould pointed out long ago that evolutionary explanations for human behavior are riddled with errors. We observe a certain behavior, then we tell a just-so story to explain how this behavior would have benefited our ancestors in the past and helped them to survive and pass on their genes. Sounds good and 'scientific' at first. The problem is that even if this is right, it isn't proof just to tell a story--you have to d More...

HOW THE MIND WORKS. (1997). Steven Pinker. ***.
Pinker is professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT. He wrote a bestseller prior to this book, “The Language Instinct.” I had great hopes of learning lots more about recent advances in neuroscience and behavioral science from this book, but found only the same material wrapped in a different sets of analogies and references. The author approached his topic via reverse engineering. He explored the tools and More...

I finally finished this book. It took me far longer than I care to admit to do so. On at least one occasion I lost interest and put it down for several weeks before coming back to it.

I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly why this was the case. It's not that it's bad - in fact, parts of it are absolutely fascinating. It's certainly not the writing; Pinker is quite good (despite a tendency to repeat himself frequently).

I think it boiled down to two things for me, with both of them being More...

This book first chapters were very easy and nice to go through, but there are a few chapter somewhere in the first half of the book that were not so interesting to me. I don't know exactly what happened but getting through these few chapters took me months. Then the book became once again pleasant and inteligible and went like this to the end.

My highlights are on:

A few pages dedicated on how mathematical concepts and thoughts are processed in our brains.

The discussion about the processes that co More...

As the title suggests, this is a book of immensely broad scope and ambition, seeking to articulate a broad theory of how the human brain is structured and operates. Along the way, Pinker surveys a number of developments in cognitive science and human evolutionary biology over the past few decades. Topics include how "sight" works (i.e., how the brain interprets the information in a retinal image), the interaction between natural language and the logic of thought, intuitive physics and ethics, an More...

This is a very readable and influential synthesis of the cognitive science view of the mind with that of evolutionary psychology. The overall thrust is that the mind is a neural computer closely governed by feelings and desires that were shaped by natural selection for their adaptive value in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our ancestors. The book is lively, with lots of down to earth examples. He holds your hand when wading through many technical subjects, faces disputes in a non-dogmatic way, More...

This is an interesting book that - as those who skip the title page may be surprised to learn - describes to us laymen how the mind works. Pinker uses an evolutionary framework to explain not only the functions of the brain but the reasoning for why it works in the way it does. Topics range from the physical to the intellectual to the emotional activities of the brain, although I thought he didn't do a great job exploring the links between each.

Evolutionary psychology has much to teach us about More...

This is really a great book. I've been a fan of Steven Pinker's since the "The Blank Slate", and he does an amazing job of distilling complicated technical subjects in a way that is easily digestible and interesting to a layperson like myself. The first section of the book, which analyzes how the brain is like a computer, is a bit of a slog. In some ways it was the most interesting for me, however, since everything he dealt with was new and cutting edge. If you get through that part the rest is More...

Pinker is the dilettante's greatest blessing and curse. He's written on every subject I've ever seriously considering studying, and marvelously: How the Mind Works is both an appealing popularization of major trends in modern psychology and cognitive science, and, if my amateur's knowledge is any guide, a great work of original thought and research in itself. This is a tough balance to strike, but Pinker, one dizzying (but necessary) chapter on logic gates and hypothetical neural networks notwit More...

I have now read three of Pinkers books and while this one is not the worst, it doesn't do much better than than the worst. His first two books on language which I have read and reviewed here were both more relevant and interesting to me. Though the language instinct was terribly written and argued, so this book has a leg up in that regard.

This book was probably a lot more relevant when it came out. Unfortunately a lot of the information in it is either dated or too basic to be interesting anymor More...

I have copies of the five mainstream books that Steven Pinker has released and am slowly working my way through them. He is one of the world's leading cognitive scientists and is a professor at MIT. I really enjoyed his first book "The Language Instinct", so was looking forward to reading his second "How The Mind Works". I didn't enjoy this one as much - at times it read somewhat like a textbook, which I attribute to the heavy subject matter. However, I rated it high because of the wealth of res More...

Pinker's "How the Mind Works" revolves around two central themes -- the computational theory of mind and natural selection. In the beginning, he devotes a lot of time and energy to shooting down other theories, which would be fine if he wasn't such a jerk about it. Most of his targets don't really seem to merit all that much energy, and his criticisms become simply a showcase for academic aggression, like a prizefighter working over some random guy picked up off the street. Strangely, he seems t More...

This book is amazing. I recommend everyone who loves psychology, neuroscience, and also philosophy. I recommend this also for people who are curious about why things are the way they are. This answers questions about why certain people think about certain things. I enjoyed mostly the chapter that mentioned how we would convince aliens that we are intelligent beings if they were to arrive. How they would differentiate us from cats and dogs and animals. It also answers questions about why robots c More...

Fascinating book, and a good follow-up to Pinker's "The Language Instinct". Strongly based on two concepts, the "computational theory of mind" and natural selection. Doesn't get very deeply into brain chemistry but focuses on the why we do what we do. It may occasionally be accused of beating a concept to death - though not blatantly so, and the conversational writing style compensates for this quite well.

I do wonder how some of the conclusions would change based on technologies, particularly re More...