Language and the Mind

The Great Courses

by Spencer Kelly

Join an esteemed professor of psychology and neuroscience to dive into the fascinating relationship between the evolution of language and the mind.

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, Audiobook, Psychology, Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience

187 pages, Audiobook

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know that you know that I know that I'm being recursive. Recursion is what makes humans special and gives us being through understanding through language.

I am my body, not cogito ergo sum. No need to assume a world away and have certainty without a universe outside of us.

Understand the biological, the psychological and the sociological across appropriate time horizons.

Cardinal directions are absolute and left and right orientation are relative to the direction I face.

This course is so much more than the just a great course on language and the mind. Within this excellent course, there is also a guidebook for understanding and thinking beyond language and the nature of the mind.


Great course.
I highly recommend this course.

[Georgiana · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first ten lectures were great.

Then he got into autism and theory of mind.

I got so angry at his incredibly dehumanising, ableist and outdated perspective (the study by Simon Baron Cohen that he cites is from 1985 and is poorly supported) that I quit in the middle of lecture 11.

I get more than enough stereotypes about how we autistic folks are all stunted in our emotional and linguistic development just from living in 21st century North America.

I was going to give it two stars, because the first almost-half really was good.

But... this guy is a scientist. He should damned well know, and do, better.

[Jenny Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the topics and some really interesting studies. I'll be referring back to this course in my work on the performative.

[Pierre Jacomet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the Audiobook for this "Great Course". The author is very knowledgeable and provides backing support for all the theories he exposes. I love linguistics and through this course, I was able to find a new frontier for my passion: Language and the mind seem to co-evolve in the sense that language is both a unique manifestation of our mind, with the purpose of communicating and through it and our brain's neuroplasticity, we learn how to develop and evolve our mind. Captivating lectures.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting and basic introduction to neurolinguistics. I was particularly enthralled by the chapters on simulation theory, synesthesia, speech language disorders, and multilingualism.

This course only got four stars from me because of how Kelly approached the 'Theory of Mind' within the context of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Some of the research cited here had its basis in ableist theories from the early 19th and 20th centuries that dehumanized neurodivergent individuals and Kelly did not adequate cover this topic within a contemporary context.

[Marlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. I'm very interested in how the mind works and language is a huge part of our brain functions. I found it to be very technical with lots of scientific language but still able to understand.

[Hendrik Strauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Presenting differing perspectives on each topic while asserting plausible inferences due to experimental evidence.
Excellent delivery, easy to follow and deeply enlightening.

[Rebee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should have listened to this book last year when I was in that bilingualism research class. It is good my favorite part is the last chapter where they discussed distributed cognition.

[Anat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry, but very interesting. If you’re into psycho linguistics, this is right up your alley.

[Victor N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, I only wish the series were longer

[Dkettmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wounderful and works well in audio format. If you like (ethical) behavioral experiments on babies this is for you.

[Amadeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author offers a broad perspective of language associated with neuroscience studies. The audiobook addresses various topics (language learning, disorders associated with language and linked to brain diseases, associative use of the mind by children to learn through language, among others) on the surprising way in which language and mind operate together, and at the same time are configured, to make sense of the conceptions that serve to interpret our environment. The audiobook is a source of inspiration for people seeking an approach to understanding the power of language in human development.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Language is a system and technology that interacts with culture, minds, and brains.