How the Mind Works @ richardeward.com

How the Mind Works
by Steven Pinker
from W. W. Norton & Company

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

• Good, but with some minor faults
  I also read Steven Pinker's `the Blank Slate', which had been recommended by a friend who knew of my interest in the brain and brain-mind area. I was also, as many other reviewers here, impressed again by Pinker's prose style. The witty asides are often apropos and lighten what might otherwise be a dry description of the findings of neuroscience. However, though I like his style, I don't always agree with Pinker and in the cases where I perceive him being wrong, this witty and cheeky style can verge on the... more info

• A Logical Mind Interprets and Sees a Logical Mind
  I found this book to be excellent and a fun read.
  It goes into detail about how one can view the human mind from a logical and behaviorist stand-point. He discusses a computer program type analogy for how a mind can work with a minimum of sub-programs or data types.
  I did find the book a little too heavy on the logical and strictly behaviorist point of view. The human mind or any mind for that matter seems a bit more than a simple set of instructions - but this may not be the case.
  All in... more info

• A treatise on evolutionary psychology
  Steven Pinker, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, argues that the mind is a computational computer. He uses Darwin's concept of reverse engineering to show how most of man's mental and emotional traits evolved.
  Pinker also shows how the mind was designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their hunter/gatherer existence, which may be why we have such trouble explaining such esoteric concepts as consciousness and sentience.
  Pinker does... more info

• dense read
  this was the first book of steven pinker's that i've read. it was very interesting at times, but the material was a bit too dense in some parts. it was difficult to glean a point very easily. and not all of the diagrams were helpful in elucidating whatever the text was trying to say. it was an okay, long, read. nevertheless, that hasnt discouraged me from tackling pinker's "the language instinct" next.

Similar Products: