How the Mind Works (Pinker)

     Steven Pinker. How the Mind Works (1997) Just what it says: a survey of what is (was) known about the workings of the brain/mind at the time of writing. Pinker’s angle is evolutionary, and it works. He claims that the brain is a computational cognitive device. Our abilities (so many of which seem easy to us merely because 99% of the computations are unconscious) are just those that would improve reproductive fitness for a creature like our ancestors: a foraging omnivore with no special weapons, etc. The evolutionary niche our ancestors entered was the cognitive one, says Pinker, and the book is a pretty good demonstration of that claim.
     Pinker suffers from a blind spot: he is an agnostic skeptic, and so sees no clear use for religion. I think religion does confer fitness on the individual, and in two ways. One, faith (the attitude behind or underlying religious expression) increases hope, and hope increases the likelihood that the organism will strive to survive in the face of overwhelming odds, odds that a cognitive creature would compute automatically, BTW. Also there is evidence that a hopeful outlook on life improves not only attitudes but the immune system. Secondly, religion cements social bonds, so that expression of religious belief is a method of increasing alliances, a factor Pinker has already convincingly argued is necessary in a social creature like ourselves. Belief is not necessary, merely religious expression. The horrible effects of religious fanaticism are IMO effects of extreme alliance. OTOH, Pinker’s claim that the mind can ask questions it is not equipped to answer is plausible. That includes questions religion seeks to answer, but also suggests real limits on scientific investigation. See Devlin’s The Math Gene for another angle on this issue.
     Since the book was written, a brain area involved in the sense of self has been discovered: it’s in the right prefrontal cortex. I’ve put a clipping about this into the book.
     A book worth reading, more than once. *** (2001)