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
... of a cloud. 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.
... modules or mental organs, each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the world. The modules' basic logic is specified by our genetic program. Their operation was shaped by natural selection ...
... modules, but the modules are not encapsulated boxes or circumscribed swatches on the surface of the brain. The organization of our mental modules comes from our genetic program, but that does not mean that there is a gene for every ...
... modules. The entities now commonly evoked to explain the mind—such as general intelligence, a capacity to form culture, and multipurpose learning strategies—will surely go the way of protoplasm in biology and of earth, air, fire, and ...
... module for perceiving the properties of surfaces, and built into it is the following assumption: “The world is smoothly and uniformly lit.” The module can solve the coal-versus-snow problem in three steps: subtract out any gradient of ...