Pinker's treatise on the naturalist mind looks like a science textbook, but the combination of computer programming and physiology laid on top of sociological metaphors and applicable understandings makes it a fantastic read. His ability to diffuse archaic arguments about the nature of the mind without appearing argumentative is what defines him as a great academic, and his ability to explain things to individuals with only a high school education (like me) is what defines him as a great writer.

The assaults on the superstitions of Freud are particularly interesting, and his breaking down of the purely linguistic issue of Searle's "Chinese Box" problem leads you to come to the same conclusion that Pinker does as Pinker is unfolding the problem.

Anyone who likes to study the nature of mind, who enjoys reading authors ranging from Dennett to Proust will like this book, and those who like to discuss the topics will find themselves better informed and far more capable of explaining things with Pinker's metaphors.

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 cannot be created and I recommend it because it asks some questions that I have not really thought about before and it was very interesting to view the perspective of Steven Pinker since it very much is not similar to mine.

Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works is a long book and a Book about Everything. Although the title suggests it's a popular psychology book, the discoveries of psychology and especially psychology understood as evolutionary psychology are used to explain all aspects of human life. Most of the first part of the book is not technical but might be boring to its readers. For example, there's a long explanation about how vision works that was a complete snooze-fest. From about halfway on in the book, I think the readers would be interested. There, Pinker writes about how evolutionary psychology helps explain societies, and, later, our leisurely appreciation of beauty and excellence like that expressed in art or music.

Part of what the book is driving at, although it is not expressed explicitly until a later work, The Blank Slate, is that the human mind is richly endowed with these innate faculties for understanding ourselves and the world but they are, by design, limited in the ways that they allow us to interpret the information we receive from the senses. Even our faculties for scientific discovery seem to have an upper limit on them. He proposes near the end of the book philosophical questions such as "How can free will exist in a deterministic world?" might be a mystery for our species because our brains weren't designed to handle that kind of question. The characters in the book Flatland are two-dimensional shapes who live in a two-dimensional world. Any person would be free to leave the world they live in called Flatland if only they left through the third dimension. But the people in flatland are only familiar with two dimensions: forward/backward and left/right. Their minds can ask the question but they could never understand what it would mean to move in a third dimension (up/down). Because of the human mind, we're in a similar position. No reason to be pessimistic, though: The human mind is awfully rich as it is.

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, natural selection) since. Pinker does not present a unifying theory of the mind, but does present interesting examples of many aspects of human behavior that he aptly explains according to his evolutionary gene-based model. I found much of what he said logical and believable, although some of the sections were less convincing than others. He spends an inordinate amount of pages on explaining gender, and by extension societal, behavior, which I found more entertaining than completely solid. The most controversial claims that Pinker makes have to do with his thoughts on the arts and religion. Pinker states that the arts have no intrinsic evolutionary value, but are outcomes of our desire for pleasure. Similarly he concludes that religion does not contribute to explaining how our brain has evolved and argues strongly against "creationism" and the value of religion in general. I'll conclude by sharing a quote from Pinker's book that sums up his thesis “human brains evolved by one set of laws, those of natural selection and genetics, and now interact with one another according to another set of laws, those of cognitive and social psychology, human ecology, and history”.

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 some people who persist will find it deeply rewarding and satisfying. The paradigm presented in this book is interesting.

3.5/5.

The book has really interesting things to say about the mind when it comes to things like vision, memory, social dynamics, arts and consciousness. I felt the first half of the book was a drag. There were a lot of places where analogies or explanations about computations the brain does were augmented with cultural references which I didn't care about or didn't understand. I thought that it muddied the point that was attempted to being made and didn't help me understand the overall structure of the chapter.

The second half was an easier read since there isn't much of the computation explanation going on but, is still riddled with cultural references.

Truth be told I didn't finish this book, but it was such an investment of time to get three quarters of the way through that I'm taking credit for the whole read...

Pinker es quizá uno de los intelectuales más influyentes de nuestro tiempo, y ésta es el tercer libro suyo que leo. Quizá debí empezar por aquí, pues antecede a “The Blank Slate” y “The Better Angels of our Nature”. Por otro lado, estos libros también son respuestas a las polémicas que generó el primero, así que en cierta forma estuvo bien conocerlos de antemano.

El libro trata precisamente de lo que dice el título, cómo funciona la mente, basándose en dos de los paradigmas más relevantes en las ciencias cognitivas actuales: la teoría computacional de la mente y la psicología evolutiva. A la vez erudito, claro y ameno, Pinker nos guía por temas complejísimos mientras nos provee del conocimiento de ramas tan diversas como la neurociencia, la antropología y la filosofía de la mente, aderezando todo con ejemplos divertidos e interesantes del arte, la historia y la cultura pop.

Los primeros cinco capítulos son un “mindblow” monumental. En ellos, Pinker nos hace pensar en las acciones más sencillas que realizamos en la vida cotidiana, como mover los dedos de la mano, y nos obliga a verlos bajo la luz de la ciencia, como los hechos maravillosos y extraordinarios que son en realidad. Cómo procesamos la información, clasificamos conceptos, ponemos límites a nuestras definiciones, extraemos conclusiones nuevas a partir de ciertos conocimientos dados. Pinker aborda estos temas de tal forma que se siente como un viaje de autodescubrimiento, que nos hace apreciar e impresionarnos de nuestras propias capacidades mentales y nos impulsa e ejercitar el pensamiento crítico. Un capítulo enteramente dedicado a la percepción visual, algo que damos tan por sentado, es uno de los más fascinantes.

Otro más explica con una gran claridad los procesos de selección natural que dieron origen a la diversidad de la vida en la tierra y, también, a nuestra mente. Los últimos tres están dedicados a temas delicados: los sentimientos, las relaciones humanas, la familia, la amistad, las diferencias entre los sexos, la creación artística, las creencias religiosas y el impulso que nos lleva a hacernos las más profundas y complicadas preguntas filosóficas.

El libro abarca tanto y cada párrafo contiene tanta información y reflexiones, que es difícil hacer un resumen que le haga justicia. Además, es uno que cabría leer muchas veces, porque cada cosa te impresiona tanto que corres el riesgo de olvidar la anterior que te impresionó. Podría mencionar, de botepronto, la explicación que nos hace de cómo en la apreciación del arte no entra sólo la psicología de la estética, sino la psicología del estatus, que da cuenta de las modas artísticas cambiantes y de cómo el medio está lleno de posers.

O su defensa de la filosofía como una actividad que permite enmarcar los problemas más complejos, ya sea para resolverlos en parte, darlos a la ciencia para que los resuelva, o de plano declararlos irresolubles. O su refutación de múltiples mitos difundidos por la psicología pop, el psicoanálisis freudiano o la antropología romántica. O su aclaración de cómo los descubrimientos científicos en las diferencias psicológicas entre los sexos no debe asustar a feministas ni envalentonar antifeministas.

Sobre esto último, hay algo que me puso a pensar. En una parte, hablando de las diferencias entre sexos, mencionó la ausencia de un mercado de pornografía para mujeres (a diferencia de la multimillonaria industria del porno para hombres) como muestra de las diferencias psicológicas innatas entre los sexos. Pero Pinker escribía en la década de los 90, antes del boom del porno por Internet. Ahora sabemos que casi la mitad del público pajero son mujeres. Es decir, algo se creía natural e innato porque todos los casos observables así lo indicaban. De pronto se dio una situación social inédita gracias a un avance tecnológico que permitía el acceso inmediato, privado y anónimo a ciertos contenidos.

Pues te deja pensando, ¿qué tantas cosas estaremos considerando naturales e innatas, que sólo estén esperando situaciones sociales inéditas para demostrarnos lo contrario?

Written by one of the world's foremost cognitive scientists, it's an eight-chapter deep dive on the human mind and how it functions. Starts with the physiological properties of the brain and its components - how language is processed, how physical environments are understood - and slowly transitions to the more abstract notion of the mind, including human behavior and evolutionary theories about how we got to be the way we are. I'm reasonably interested in psychology and social studies and evolutionary biology, and as such, I found the second half a lot more page-turning than the first - especially since Pinker uses all kinds of unfortunately dated computer analogies early on that were surely more apt back in 1997 than they are today. (An updated version of this book might be able to milk a lot more out of "computational algorithm" metaphors, particularly given the huge advancements made in artificial intelligence and machine learning over the last two decades.) Still a fascinating read with plenty to offer, and if you ever get a chance, check out some of Pinker's lectures and debates on YouTube. The guy's pretty good at what he does!

'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 the mind works'. If each of the 8 chapters (some of which span upwards of a 100 pages) had been published as a self-contained book, no one would have been the wiser. In this sense, some cohesion would have been nice. The material is presented in a somewhat haphazard manner.

Now then, onto the good: the material presented is totally awesome. Pinker is a terrific writer, and just about everything covered in 'How the Mind Works' was intensely interesting. And cover a lot he does: you'll read about your brain's insane ability to make sense of visual input; about the importance of 'irrational' emotions (and why they're not so irrational after all); and about the evolutionary underpinning of sexuality, to name a few topics of interest. I didn't agree with everything said, and some of his opinions, presented as fact, are decidedly controversial. But most importantly, all of the topics were interesting, and his conclusions are almost always well supported. 'How the Mind Works' was never boring, and that's high praise for a book of this scope.

Should you read this book? Maybe. It's pretty ambitious, and unless you're fairly stoked about the material, you might be better of finding something more focused and concise. But if you're willing to take the plunge, you're in for a treat - How the Mind Works is an intellectual tour de force.

Pinker hits the bull's eye in this book debunking the ill arguments of the nurture front in the nature nurture debate, on his way relentlessly takes down feminism, noble savage theory, blank slate and on the side veganism a bit dealing crushing blows with solid arguments and facts. A must read for those interested in behavioral research and debunking the patchouli scented romantic arguments of the left.

This book covers the computational theory of mind and evolutionary psychology. The former asserts that the mind is the computational product of the brain. The later examines how many aspects of human nature can be explained as biological adaptations. Both are crucial to understanding how the mind works. Both are explained in exquisite depth (read: this is a very long book).

Pinker gets one thing wrong at the end when he asserts what's known as the the "hard problem of consciousness" which his refers to as sentience. He also makes a misstatement about free will.

"Sentience is not a combination of brain events or computational states."

"Free will is not a causal chain of events and states by definition."

This is frustrating because I feel like he ran a 3 minute mile but stopped just shy of the finish line!

He's wrong on both counts. For more read Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett.