How the Mind Works"A model of scientific writing: erudite, witty, and clear." —New York Review of Books In this Pulitzer Prize finalist and national bestseller, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness? How the Mind Works synthesizes the most satisfying explanations of our mental life from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and other fields to explain what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and contemplate the mysteries of life. This edition of Pinker's bold and buoyant classic is updated with a new foreword by the author. |
From inside the book
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... desire to commit senseless violence against laser-printer repairmen? And wouldn't it have to worry about reprisals from technicians who with the turn of a screwdriver could leave it pathetically singing “A Bicycle Built for Two”? A ...
... desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols. The symbols are the physical states of bits of matter, like chips in a computer or neurons in the brain. They symbolize things in the world because they are triggered by ...
... assumptions about illumination, of course, but assumptions about bodies in motion. Our common sense about other people is a kind of intuitive psychology—we try to infer people's beliefs and desires from what they Standard Equipment 29.
... desires. Our intuitive psychology, though, must make the assumption that other people have beliefs and desires; we cannot sense a belief or desire in another person's head the way we smell oranges. If we did not see the social world ...