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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... objects and not bump into them, it must crunch these numbers and guess what kinds of objects in the world reflected the light that gave rise to them. The problem is humblingly difficult. First, a visual system must locate where an object ...
... objects. in front of another object, dark paper lying on light paper, a surface painted two shades of gray, two objects touching side by side, gray cellophane on a white page, an inside or outside corner where two walls meet, or a ...
... . Finally, how might a vision module recognize the objects out there in the world, so that the robot can name them or recall what they do? The obvious solution is to build a template or cutout for 8 HOW THE MIND WORKS.
... object it sees as a unique entity unlike anything else in the universe. It has to put objects in categories so that it may apply its hard-won knowledge about similar objects, encountered in the past, to the object at hand. But whenever ...
... objects change their positions but cannot see them move—a syndrome that a philosopher once tried to convince me was logically impossible! The stream from a teapot does not flow but looks like an icicle; the cup does not gradually fill ...