''How the Mind Works'' is a 1997 book by the Canadian-American cognitive scientist

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ...

, in which the author attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

ary terms. Drawing heavily on the paradigm of

evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...

articulated by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Pinker covers subjects such as

vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain und ...

emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is currently no scientific ...

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

, and "the meaning of life". He argues for both a

computational theory of mind In philosophy of mind, the computational theory of mind (CTM), also known as computationalism, is a family of views that hold that the human mind is an information processing system and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of com ...

and a neo-Darwinist,

adaptationist Adaptationism (also known as functionalism) is the Darwinian view that many physical and psychological traits of organisms are evolved adaptations. Pan-adaptationism is the strong form of this, deriving from the early 20th century modern synthesi ...

approach to evolution, all of which he sees as the central components of evolutionary psychology. He criticizes

difference feminism Difference feminism holds that there are differences between men and women but that no value judgment can be placed upon them and both sexes have equal moral status as persons. The term "difference feminism" developed during the "equality-versus ...

because he believes scientific research has shown that women and men differ little or not at all in their moral reasoning. The book was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

Reception

Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modul ...

, considered one of the fathers of the computational theory of mind, criticized the book. Fodor wrote a book called ''The Mind Doesn't Work That Way'', saying "There is, in short, every reason to suppose that the Computational Theory is part of the truth about cognition. But it hadn't occurred to me that anyone could suppose that it's a very large part of the truth; still less that it's within miles of being the whole story about how the mind works". He continued, "I was, and remain, perplexed by an attitude of ebullient optimism that's particularly characteristic of Pinker's book. As just remarked, I would have thought that the last forty or fifty years have demonstrated pretty clearly that there are aspects of higher mental processes into which the current armamentarium of computational models, theories and experimental techniques offers vanishingly little insight." Pinker responded to Fodor's criticisms in '' Mind & Language''. Pinker argued that Fodor had attacked

straw man A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false o ...

positions, wryly suggesting a possible title for his riposte as ''No One Ever Said it Did''.'So How ''Does'' the Mind Work?' ''Mind & Language'', 20/1 (Feb 2005), p. 1 Daniel Levitin has criticized Pinker for referring to music as an "auditory cheesecake" in the book. In his book '' This Is Your Brain on Music'' (2006), Levitin takes some time in the last chapter to rebut Pinker’s arguments. When asked about Levitin's book by ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' journalist Clive Thompson, Pinker said he hadn't read it.

References

External links

Pinker's website on ''How the Mind Works''

Video of a 1999 lecture based on the book
* *

by

, a critical review of ''How the Mind Works'' *
The mind doesn't work that way
, abstract of a book by

in response to ''How the Mind Works'' {{Steven Pinker 1997 non-fiction books Cognitive science literature Books about cognition Books about evolutionary psychology English-language books Works by Steven Pinker W. W. Norton & Company books