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 a real page turner. For about a month this book turned me into a Steven Pinker quote machine ("Emotions are just a doomsday device!", "Marriage is just mate-socialsm!") This, of course, makes you either highly fascinating, or the most annoying person on Earth, depending on who you talk to. Either way, I highly recommend this book. It really makes you step back and reconsider our your outdated beliefs about how people think.

impenetrable, repetitive, useless ... did I say I was disappointed?

The best science writers have an understanding of the subject on which they write that is both deep and broad along with the ability to express these ideas in a way which is both clear and connects it with ideas and experiences that resonate with the general reader. Pinker is, along with Brian Greene and Sean Carroll in physics and Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins in biology, amongst the very finest of these.

في هذا الكتاب يتحدث ستيفن بنكر أستاذ العلوم الإدراكية وعالم النفس بشكل أساسي عن نظرية العقل الحسابية
computational theory of the mind

بالعربي، الرجل يتحدث عن العقل (ليس المخ) من وجهة نظر أخرى غير اعتيادية. وجهة نظر تطورية. فيفسر العمليات الادراكية داخل العقل بقوى تطورية (داروينية) وبقوانين حاسويبة.

النظريات التي طرحها وتحدث عنها بنكر رائعة وطريقة شرحها أروع
قد يكون عنوان الكتاب مضلل بعض الشي. لكنه كتاب يستحق القراءة

I'll admit it, the title drew me to this book, and, having finished reading the entire book, I can say it's pretty apt! I'm a liberal arts major who never even took Psych 101 and this tome did a great job filling me in about the different modes of the human mind. This book by turns fascinated me, astonished me, and caused me to marvel, all great things. Having a book kindle one's curiosity is always splendid, especially when the objects of that curiosity are the myriad amazing things our body does each moment of each day but whose wonder we become desensitized to.

In HTMW we learn that "The mind is not the brain, but what the brain does...The brain's special status comes from a special thing the brain does which makes us see, think, feel, choose and act. That special thing is information processing, or computation" (24). Pinker bases his book on two scientific theories: the Computational Theory of Mind and Evolution through Natural Selection. Basically, he argues that the mind is an adaptation that evolved to help humans outwit the environment, animals, objects, and human beings. In the opening chapters he explains these theories, and then for the rest of the book applies them to several of the mind's many modules, such as: the visual system, ideas, personal emotions, social emotions, and philosophy, religion, art, and music ("Auditory cheesecake").

I learned a ridiculous amount from this book and often felt ecstatic reading it. His arguments are very convincing and copiously documented. And his prose is very rich and memorable. I re-read many sections in sheer delight and things stuck with me due to the engaging way he wrote them. I plan to re-read portions of this book for a long while to come. The chapter on personal emotions, "Hotheads," was a highlight for me, looking at why we feel at all, where different feelings come from in our evolutionary past, and what emotions are and are for. He discusses all kinds of feelings such as anger, happiness, grief, and disgust. It's a fantastic chapter!

Overall, this book enhanced my worldview through a detailed look at the human mind's inner workings and boosted my curiosity, both invaluable assets! I am looking forward to reading more of Mr. Pinker's works.

A must read for whom is interested in philosophical questions related to the scientific and evolutionary functioning of the mind.

This book frequently gets rave reviews. Whenever i sit down to read Pinker, i wish i were drinking again. Here is an example of a typical quotation from this book that i could only follow if i were drunk: "The cobalt 60 nucleus is said to spin counterclockwise if you look down on its north pole, but that description by itself is circular because 'north pole' is simply what we call the end of the axis from which a rotation looks counterclockwise." This is in the middle of a discussion, in which he puts down Richard Feynman, and concludes "God is not ambidextrous after all." I feel that Pinker presents his material in an annoyingly obtuse way and may be drinking when he writes. LOL

According to Dr. Pinker, the mind's functioning can be explained by the computational theory of mind, that is, the theory that the human mind is the product of complex neuronal activity shaped over thousands of generations through natural selection. This theory posits that the mind is comprised of specific problem solving modules each designed to tackle problems of survival. The book could have been titled the evolutionary theory of mind since much of it is focused on natural selection and the propagation of genes as an explanation for how human mental modules came to exist. It is an entertaining attempt to explain many facets of human behavior, but I think the book could have been half as long. Of particular interest is the final chapter in which he attempts to shed light on the arts, music, humor, religion, and philosophy. These areas of life he argues have little adaptive or survival value and he attempts to use the theory to understand why human beings hold these things in such high esteem. Finally, he presents the idea that perhaps the human brain did not evolve the capacity to solve the deepest mysteries of human existence.

Enough already. I started reading this book in September, and for so long I was slogging it joylessly. Today I decided to abandon it, even though I was already at the last chapter.

Very interesting topic, but the book gets really obsessively detailed and repetitive at times. While Pinker have a way of explaining things, I am just frustrated that none of the things he explains have actual hard evidence backing it. It is fine to be able to come up with a seemingly logical explanation for certain human behaviour, but the lack of real evidence just don't cut it for me.

This book has been made mostly completely obsolete by the field of epigenetics. The type of genetic (over) determinism espoused here was always questionable -- the author tries to explain 90% of human behavior through the narrow lense of the "selfish gene" -- but, epigenetics has shown that environmental factors can cause the body to put certain genetic expressions on hold for generations. The idea of genetic determinism if not flatout wrong, is at the very least deeply flawed. This is too bad because the book starts (Chapters 1 & 2) with an interesting and still-relevant discussion of modular brain functions, before it spins off into fantastic, disproven speculations which to a large extent are only tangentially related to "How the Mind Works". Your average Wikipedia page is better sourced than the last 5 chapters of this book. Not worth your time. Instead read: How Emotions are Made, The Ego Tunnel, or The Epigenetics Revolution

This may be the best books summarising the interaction of neural networks/neuroscience, psychology, biology and sociology that forms modern cognitive science for the non expert. In part, that's because there aren't that many books trying to do that.

The key ideas are the computional theory of the mind/mind=brain as a computational system using inputs from reality and mental models and languages to generate mental representations/pictures that guide our answers and choices (but quite different in several ways from a digital computer), and natural selection/evolution generating a species/humans that specialise in survival due to superior cognitive abilities.

There's also an introduction to neural networks as how the brain implements the mind, a decent discussion about consciousness, emotions, bounded rationality and cognitive biases, but those discussions are relatively short and the topics better covered in other later books (e.g Kahneman's Thinking Fast Thinking Slow for cognitive biases, Dahaene's Consciousness and the brain etc...).
Much has been made about the power of artificial neural networks to learn and even outperform humans in some restricted domains, and the computational theory of mind and its focus on innate knowledge has been dismissed by some of the researchers involved. But behind the scenes many of those successes rely on good data that is similar to providing the networks to strongly informative Bayesian priors and state of the art AI is putting more emphasis on organising neural network learning via good models and the equivalent of innate knowledge or prior probabilities. The basic idea of a computational system processing inputs into various propositions/representations implemented by (deep) neural networks remains a decent synthesis, though the last 20 years (this book is from 1998) have seen big improvements in both neural networks and more structural models such Bayesian networks.

there is two contending interpretation exists among academia on Darwinian Evolution: Gradualism vs Punctuated Equilibrium. they strikingly disagree on the question of “how a phenotypic trait evolves”. in gradualism (Richard Dawkins and others), any phenotype must have an Adaptive value (here the definition of "adaptation" is very strict, it means reproductive advantage only) i.e. a trait that increases the chance for more living offspring evolves slowly through selection pressure. on the other hand, proponent of punctuated equilibrium (Steven J Gould and other) don’t accept the idea of “adaptation”, rather they theorized something called“Exaptation”, which says that a trait may arise through natural selection for one purpose but later organism may find another way to use it which doesn’t give any survival value (i.e. doesn’t provide reproductive advantage). such traits or phenotypes are called evolutionary byproduct. Mr. Gould’s called them “Spandrel”. Spandrels of San Marco are famous for their beautiful art, but originally these spandrels were structural components of the basilica which later turned into artistic masterpieces.

Unlike slow Adaptation, Exaptation happens in punctuated manner, i.e. out of sudden in the geological timescale. Epigenetics is considered to be one of the mechanisms for such punctuated evolution (please see, "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky).

if we consider human mind as a phenotype that comes from an organ called the brain, and if the brain is an evolved organ through natural selection, which interpretation should we take to explain human mind? is mind adaptive? a trait that helps multiplying offspring? Or is mind exaptative, i.e. an evolutionary byproduct?

in his influential book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Daniel Kahneman demonstrated that human mind is by default irrational, rational thinking is a very expensive process hence turned off most of the time. instead, our brain uses shortcuts, know as heuristics or biases to solve any given situation. this line of research and academic findings tipped the view of human mind toward exaptationism. i.e. prominent view is that human mind is an evolutionary byproduct which explains why it is such irrational. in this view, it is considered that human mind was evolved to survive in predator-prey paradigm in which rational thinking would result in predation and death. our concept of art, music, language, etc is simply a byproduct of a formal survival machine called the brain.

now enters Steven Pinker. Mr. Pinker argued that mind is an adaptive phenotype. so the only way to understand it is through evolutionary history not by chaos theory or reductionist physical approach. which implies that the irrational throughs are not useless at all. rather our cognition biases and irrationalities are very important to increase the change of our reproductive success. and that is exactly how human mind should work.

I consider Steven Pinker and Gerard Diamond as the best two scientific writer of our time. other writers like Yuval Noah Harari, Richard Dawkins etc are popular but not even close to these two giants. in this book, Mr. Pinker destroyed exaptationism, though not without criticism. some of his descriptions just flown over my head, nonetheless, this book turns out to be the most informative book on evolution I've ever read.