Tuesday, April 11, 2023

The Summary Of How The Mind Works By Steven Pinker .


I am about to finish How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker a Canadian ,American  cognitive scientist who conduct scientific research as professor of psychology at the Harvard university  .Writer has tried to explain poorly understood functions of human mind by reverse engineering the human mind .  The writer has tried to explain what make us rational and why are we so often irrational .What make us happy ,sad ,afraid ,angry ,disgust. Why we fall in love ?

And how do we engage  with imponderables of Morality ,Religion and consciousness ? Writer puts light on the subject via cognitive science ,evolutionary biology and other fields that explain how the mind works. 

He begins  it with how a human brain started to work at first place in the evolution and how day to day task of difficult life made it adopt various concepts ,thought patterns and behaviors which helped him to face the challenges of food ,safety and  reproduction throughout the the life. .

According to writer content of the worlds are  not to "know only but to grasp with suitable mental machinery because everything we learn as "obvious " becomes less and les obvious when we start to learn about Universe .

Human psychology is engineering in Reverse in order to figure out our specialized information Tool .Psychology can be used in search to what was human brain designed to do. For it is hunt inherited universal characteristics of homo Sapiens. Ideas are gifts ,Communication is giving ,speaker is the sender ,Audience is recipient and knowing is Having .

Science and Morality are separate phrases of reasoning.

Step out of your mind for a moment and you will see that your thoughts and feelings are magnificent contrivance  of Mental world Rather than as an only way that things could be .

What make us  unique as homo sapiens as we are proud of ourselves today for ?

these are physically as below ,

Visual animal 

Group living 

Hand Hunting 

Mind is the system of the Organs Of Computation ,Designed by Natural Selection to solve the problems of our ancestors faced in Foraging way way of life. In particular outmaneuvering other animals ,plants and other people . Each  our our mental modules solve this problem by the Leap of Faith How the world works ,By Making Assumptions that are indispensable but indefensible -the only Defense being that Assumption worked well in the world of our ancestors . There is Nothing Common about Common sense. No Database can install us facts that we Know tactically and No one Ever Taught them ever to us.

According to writer the mind was designed to attain number of maximum copies of Gene that created it .Only Applicators whos Effects Tend to Enhance the Probability of Their Own Replication come to predominate .

There are two theories until now about how the mind works .One is theory of Natural Selection and Other is The Computational Theory of Mind.

According to Computational theory of Mind 

   Beliefs and desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols.

Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal.

   • “Mental Organ”: It is clear the mind is structured heterogeneously with many specialized parts.

• Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game playable.


Intelligence, as used in a majority of the text, is the ability to attain goals in the face of an obstacle by means of decisions based on rational (truth-obeying) rules.
• The concept of the individual is the fundamental particle of our faculties of social reasoning.
• Life is a densely branching bush, Not a scale or ladder, and living organisms are at the tips of the branches, not on lower rungs.
• Evolution is about ends, not means; becoming smart is just one option.
• Human brains evolved by one set of laws, those of natural selection and genetics, and now interact with one another according to other sets of laws, those of cognitive and social psychology, human ecology, and history.

Consciousness has various forms. We can have self-knowledge, access to information, and then there’s the big mystery of sentience.
Access to information consciousness is a mere problem, not a mystery. Therefore, one day we will understand our minds ‘consciousness’ however, the answer may not be as satisficing as sentient experience makes its self out to be.
• Learning is often described as the indispensable shaper of amorphous brain tissue. Instead, it might be an innate adaption to the project scheduling demands of the self-assembling animal.

This is  the summary i shared with you here .

I save my personal opinion on the topic till  next post hopefully .

Thank you for reading dear friends!

Health ,peace and happiness to all of you and loved ones


22 comments:

  1. Another blogging buddy had a post today on a somewhat similar topic concerning a book that might interest you as well. Here's the link:
    https://mikenet707.blogspot.com/2023/04/5848-clash-between-science-and-religion.html

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    1. sorry after many tries i could not locate even it appeared but click did not work wonder why :( thanks anyway dear Debra

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  2. It is an interesting study. I am interested in your thoughts about tit.

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    1. thank you dear Emma ,for me it is mystery how our mind "feels" i am about to finish last chapter The Meaning OF Life so in next post i will share my own opinion about last chapter particularly

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  3. Oh, it does seem complicated, yet I can understand some of it. Although, we may become too smart for our own good with the way the world is hyping many things that aren't natural, yet humans feel they can change for the better. Unfortunately, there are always side effects.

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    1. your comments makes me happy dear Ellie .how nice you get this stuff which means there is some part of you interested in this kind of things .
      i agree that exposure of Much "knowledge " or information " has ruined the beauty and innocence of life in many ways specially emotionally. our deep dive into science is turning people cynical on the one hand and on the other hand so many are acknowledging the divine presence .it totally depend on our attitude how we look at things
      the last line yes so true that nothing is present here without counterpart or consequences .side effect is other name for them i think

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  4. The most profound secret , baili.
    How our mind works.

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    1. yes most astonishing wonder of this universe until now is human mind dear Pedro ,not physical brain but mind that "feels "

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  5. Sometimes, the way my mind works is confusing even to myself, Baili. This book does sound interesting but it is not one that will be on my reading list. You re interested in learning so much about so many things and that is admirable, but my reading is done only for pleasure these days.

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    1. as according to science everything in this universe is "energy" so is our mind dear Dorothy a dense compact energy is provided to deal with world we are put and of course unlike other things our mental energy has Vast plasticity to emerge in any form like water and take any shape but most of us are unaware of it's ability and capacity to do things so when we are unable to understand our mental energy and give it right direction it is stuck and wild inside our head and this is when we feel afraid or confused and puzzled or struck .Best thing is that we have been given full freedom to mould or use it the way we like :)
      precious friend Dorothy i agree that my longing for learning seems incontrollable sometimes and i mechanically choose books like this

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  6. Thank you for sharing.

    All the best Jan

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  7. I like how you are curious about many interesting topics! I would enjoy sitting and chatting with you!

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    1. this is honor to hear from you dear Martha ,i myself will definitely enjoy chatting with about life and different topics as i know how keen reader you are :)

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  8. Sounds like an interesting read.

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    1. it is dear Nancy as it reveals research of a neuroscientist about how human mind functions

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