Book Review: How the Mind Works

Finally my next book review. It is really a long book, so it took some time :-). It is How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.

This is probably the definitive book on the computational theory of mind paired with natural selection. Being one of the most eloquent, wittiest and most successful psychologists and neuroscientists of this age, Steven Pinker outlines his thoughts with startling precision and a sense of good humor. Let’s have a look at the two big building blocks of his theory

The Computational Theory of Mind
Information processing is the central activity of our brains. Basically our mind consists of mental representations, which are the symbol representations used by the mind. These representations can in turn be accessed by our thought processes.

Our mental representations are the inscriptions of things, concepts and ideas in our mind. They are connected in our neural network. Different connections use different connection weights. By this mechanism we can determine that a horse, a pig and a bird are all animals but “horse” and “pig” are more strongly connected to each other than to “bird” and they also belong to the mental representation of “mammal”. This is done by simple statistical operations and can be modeled in traditional neural networks. Departing from classical connectionism Steven Pinker further proposes a hierarchical “layer-structure” in our mental representations. This structure allows us to perform difficult tasks such as quantification, recursion or the implementation of fuzzy logic.

Natural Selection
Natural selection is pretty straightforward. Whatever makes a living organism successful at reproducing itself is reproduced the most and is therefore most likely to be found in subsequent generations. As a result, most if not all of the features of our body or mind are here because they have been essential for survival or reproduction to our ancestors. This includes everything from stereo vision to sex drive (which differs from females to males in most species) or family values. Natural selection allows us to explain why the mind works as it does.

The Other 350 Pages
The computational theory of mind and natural selection are just the building blocks of Steven Pinker’s explanation of the human brain. In the rest of the book, he continues to apply these concepts to everything from vision to intelligence, emotions or family values. It is a tremendous read and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in neuroscience or psychology!

How the mind works was published back in 1999, so it might be that some of its insights are not considered state-of-the-art science anymore. Generally though, the book was able to withstand the test of time and I am not aware of any claims in the book that have been refuted by now.

Currently, I am reading Sartre's Nausea. Follow me on Twitter to hear what I think about it or discuss any other book!