
	Where results make sense

Topic: Steven Pinker

Related Topics

The Language Instinct

Language acquisition

Words and Rules

David Buss

How the Mind Works

Language acquisition device

Language learning

Cognitive science

Universal grammar

Jerry Fodor

Bellairs Research Institute

Cognition

Matt Ridley

Noam Chomsky

Antonio Damasio

In the News (Thu 26 Nov 09)

Northern Trust

Marvin Harrison

Peter Chernin

Gary Locke

Match Play

Penelope Cruz

Mickey Rourke

AR Rahman

Danny Boyle

Hugh Jackman

	Steven Pinker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his spirited and wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
		Pinker has been married and divorced twice, and his current girlfriend, Rebecca Goldstein, is a professor of philosophy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
		Pinker is currently the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard having previously directed of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Steven_Pinker (822 words)

	How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker critically reviewed By Colin McGinn
		Pinker offers a cute example of this in our fear of snakes and spiders compared to our blase attitude toward cars and guns--rational enough when the former were the life-threatening forces, but obsolete in the age of death by crash and bullet.
		Pinker adopts the "selfish gene" model of animal behavior, according to which we are programmed with traits and propensities that are likely to cause our genes to replicate themselves in descendant organisms.
		Pinker cannot accept that something might possess an objective aesthetic value that we have the capacity to appreciate; no, the value has to be a projection of some psychological buzz that we experience for adaptive reasons.
	www.2think.org /htmw_review.shtml (3592 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The Language Instinct: Books: Steven Pinker (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		According to Steven PInker, science is an institution that fosters the instinct to make sense of the world while discouraging the instinct to deceive ourselves and one another.
		Pinker wishes to claim that linguistics is a science, he should uphold the standards normally demanded in sciences.
		Pinker is to be commended for writing about linguistics in a readable manner, but in doing so he shows that linguistics, in its present form, is no more a science than is astrology.
	www.amazon.co.uk /Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/0140291237 (1166 words)

	PCBE: Transcripts (March 6, 2003): Session 3
		PINKER: Yeah. Well, the genetic differences between humans and chimps are small as a proportion of the genome calculated on, you know, a base pair by base pair basis, but because DNA is basically a computational system, small differences in the sheer information content can make a big difference in the final product.
		PINKER: Well, in an ideal system none of them would be in the sense that we would not inflict punishment on someone that we had excellent reason to believe did not commit the act and hence could not have been deterred by such a policy in the future, namely, innocent people who are frame.
		PINKER: Yes and no. This is what I call the fear of nihilism, that a materialist, Darwinist view of human mind will expose all of our values to be in some sense shams, that they are just means to the end of some practical function, like propagating genes, deterring violence and so on.
	www.bioethics.gov /transcripts/march03/session3.html (7028 words)

	Book review of Steven Pinker
		Pinker notes that mentalese might actually be simpler than the languages we speak, because it doesn't have to deal with the oddities of spoken language (such sa pronouns and indexicals) or with pronunciation.
		Pinker shows that something similar happens when we speak: a number of organs cooperate in making the sounds of words, and the sound wave is refined as it is being uttered; and viceversa when the soundwave is being heard.
		Pinker's answer is similar to the answer to the question of why are there so many species of animals if all animals are equipped with the same genetic code: it's the way evolution works, namely variation is an inherent element of evolution.
	www.thymos.com /mind/pinker4.html (1989 words)

	the evolutionist: Steven Pinker
		Steven Pinker: The main goal was to present a cohesive picture of the different faculties of the mind -- to discuss topics that we understand reasonably well, such as stereoscopic vision, and topics that have not been studied as much, such as romantic love, all within a single framework.
		Pinker: There is an ordinary scientific problem of consciousness, namely, why is information processing in the brain organized into two streams, one of which we can talk about and reflect on and that plays an active role in our moment-by-moment deliberations, and another stream to which we have no access.
		Pinker: Since we can imagine a robot that, behaviour-for-behaviour and state-for-state, is identical to a human, but in which there's "no one home" -- no one actually feeling the pain or seeing the red -- there can't be an adaptive explanation of sentience, because we've defined it as something that can have no external consequences.
	www.lse.ac.uk /collections/evolutionist/pinker.htm (5071 words)

	Reason Magazine - Biology vs. the Blank Slate
		Steven Pinker: To explore why the concept of human nature and biological approaches to the mind in general are seen as so politically suspect.
		Pinker: What we call free will is a product of particular circuits of the brain, presumably concentrated in the prefrontal lobes, that respond to contingencies of responsibility and credit and blame and reward and punishment and alter their operations as a consequence.
		Pinker: Whether humans are mentally indistinguishable or not is an empirical question, and we're not going to make people into clones by a desire that they be clones, even on the dubious premise that that is desirable.
	www.reason.com /news/show/28537.html (4457 words)

	Steven Pinker's "The language instinct"
		Pinker does not mention it, but there is a vigorous debate over the status of mentalese (see the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy or this article by Larry Kaye).
		Linguistic relativity emerges largely unscathed, mainly because Pinker sidesteps it: he does not mention any study of the correlation between peoples' beliefs and their language, but puts forward a "clinching experiment" that shows that physiology rather than language is the dominant influence on the learning of new color words.
		Pinker seems to imply that the baby is not just thinking "Wow!", but something more sophisticated, such as "I assume that things don't split into two like that, but this sense data is inconsistent with my assumption.
	www.physics.wustl.edu /~alford/pinker.html (2262 words)

	Biography of Steven Pinker
		Pinker rocketed to fame—at least the level of fame possible in the world of academic psychology—in 1994 when he published The Language Instinct, which argued that human language is a biological adaptation, not a cultural invention.
		Pinker recognizes that the implication of Darwinism most feared by creationists is the “idea that evolution can explain mind and morality.” Pinker tries to reassure readers of The Blank Slate that evolutionary psychology doesn’t mean the end of moral responsibility.
		Pinker argues that a view of the mind as having been shaped by evolution is not amoral.
	www.law.umkc.edu /faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/pinkers.html (1454 words)

	Are Our Thoughts Constrained by Language? Jeffrey Mishlove Interviews Steven Pinker
		With me is Professor Steven Pinker, a member of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at MIT.
		PINKER: Well, those are certainly what make for great literature and poetry and prose, and artists and writers take advantage of those things to get across a certain emotional effect.
		PINKER: I'd be willing to bet that the experiences come first, and the reason they have the words for them is that they need the words to talk about them.
	www.williamjames.com /transcripts/pinker1.htm (4041 words)

	Discover the Wisdom of Mankind on steven pinker (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Steven Pinker (born September 18 1954, in Montreal, Canada) is one of the most prominent cognitive scientists today.
		Pinker was previously the director of the Center for Cognitive_Neuroscience^ at the Massachusetts^ Institute of Technology, where he was a professor for 21 years before returning to Harvard in 2003.
		Pinker goes further than Chomsky, arguing many other human mental faculties are evolved, and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard_Dawkins^ in many evolutionary disputes.
	www.blinkbits.com /blinks/steven_pinker (1027 words)

	Amazon.ca: Blank Slate: Books: Steven Pinker (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Pinker's synthesizing of many fields is impressive but uneven, especially when he ventures into moral philosophy and religion; examples like "Even Hitler thought he was carrying out the will of God" violate Pinker's own principle that one should not exploit Nazism "for rhetorical clout." For the most part, however, the book is persuasive and illuminating.
		Pinker sets out to debunk three popular notions: the Blank Slate (that people are born blank and their identities are forged by their environment), the Noble Savage (people are born inherently good and are corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (that some metaphysical soul directs individuals).
		Pinker delves into politics, gender, and the humanities, all the while claiming that his somewhat conservative-skewed slant is supported by hard science.
	www.amazon.ca /Blank-Slate-Steven-Pinker/dp/0142003344 (2018 words)

	CNN.com - Pinker says it's nature, not nurture - Apr 19, 2004
		Steven Pinker brings his theory of human mind development to the masses with his best-selling books.
		In 1994, Pinker translated some of his findings into a book aimed at a general audience, "The Language Instinct," in which he promoted the idea that language is a biological adaptation.
		Pinker's way with words has earned him finalist nods for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and 2003 (for "How the Mind Works" and "The Blank Slate," respectively), as well as the Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize (for "How the Mind Works").
	www.cnn.com /2004/WORLD/americas/04/16/pinker (521 words)

	Steven Pinker (via CobWeb/3.1 planetlab2.cs.unc.edu) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Steven Pinker Steven Pinker (born September 18 1954, in Montreal, Canada) is professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of a number of popular books.
		Pinker has suggested an evolutionary mechanism for this faculty, but this idea remains controversial and is rejected by Chomsky.
		Pinker also argues that many other human mental faculties are evolved, and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many evolutionary disputes.
	steven-pinker.iqnaut.net.cob-web.org:8888 (334 words)

	Steven Pinker Speaker Profile at The Lavin Agency
		Pinker is also a fellow of several scholarly societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
		Pinker's research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has received numerous awards, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences and five prizes from the American Psychological Association.
		Pinker recognizes that, on the one hand, the mind is an engineering masterpiece: people can see, move, reason, and plan better than any foreseeable robot.
	www.thelavinagency.com /canada/stevenpinker.html (706 words)

	MIT World » : Pinker's Farewell
		Pinker theorized that children unconsciously divide the world of actions into categories like geometry and force, and that humans have evolved a grammar based on this intuitive physics.
		Pinker discusses Noam Chomsky’s “enormous” impact on him, as well as his profound differences with Chomsky concerning the evolution of humans’ innate ability to acquire language.
		Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
	mitworld.mit.edu /video/160 (439 words)

	Language Acquisition (via CobWeb/3.1 planetlab2.cs.unc.edu) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Negative evidence refers to information about which strings of words are not grammatical sentences in the language, such as corrections or other forms of feedback from a parent that tell the child that one of his or her utterances is ungrammatical.
		Many models of language acquisition assume that the input to the child consists of a sentence and a representation of the meaning of that sentence, inferred from context and from the child's knowledge of the meanings of the words (e.g.
		A third possibility (see Pinker, 1982, 1984, 1989; Macnamara, 1982; Grimshaw 1981; Wexler & Culicover, 1980; Bloom, in press) exploits the fact that there is a one-way contingency between syntax and semantics in the basic sentences of most of the world's languages.
	www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk.cob-web.org:8888 /~harnad/Papers/Py104/pinker.langacq.html (18914 words)

	Amazon.de: How the Mind Works: English Books: Steven Pinker (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-17)
		Pinker argues that a combination of Darwin's theories and some canny computer programs are the key to understanding ourselves--but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W.C. Fields, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology and Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty and his 888 children.
		Pinker argues that Darwin plus canny computer programs are the key to understanding ourselves--but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W. Fields, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology, and Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty and his 888 children.
		Steven Pinker is Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the renowned books, 'The language instinct' (Penguin, 1995) and 'Words and rules: the ingredients of language' (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000).
	www.amazon.de /How-Mind-Works-Steven-Pinker/dp/0393318486 (2116 words)

	Unofficial Web Page about Steven Pinker
		Pinker provides much of the framework on which his theory is very attractive indeed, but does not always make the connections between disparate elements of his domains of research, sometimes apparently disregarding such conjunctions.
		Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct is one of the most recent, comprehensive and ambitious attempts to account for the origin of language.
		Pinker: I think the key to understanding the mind is to try to "reverse-engineer" it to figure out what natural selection designed it to accomplish in the environment in which we evolved.
	www.math.tohoku.ac.jp /~kuroki/Pinker (6069 words)

	Steven Pinker, noted Harvard psychologist and cognition expert, to inaugurate Distinguished Lecture series
		Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and a world-renowned linguist and cognition expert, will deliver the first in Case Western Reserve University’s annual Distinguished Lecture series.
		Pinker is best known for his books on language: The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997) and Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language.
		A native of Montreal, Pinker holds a B.A. in experimental psychology from McGill University and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
	www.case.edu /news/2004/12-04/pinker.htm (271 words)

	Big Thinkers - Steven Pinker
		Steven Pinker, a native of Montreal, received his BA from McGill University in 1976 and his PhD in psychology from Harvard in 1979.
		After serving on the faculties of Harvard and Stanford Universities or a year each, he moved to MIT in 1982, where he is currently Peter de Florez Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow.
		Professor Pinker's research has focused on visual cognition (including mental imagery, visual attention, and shape recognition) and on the psychology of language (including the acquisition, processing, historical change, and biological evolution of language).
	www.kurzweilai.net /bios/bio0009.html (346 words)

	Steven Pinker - Penguin UK Authors - Penguin UK
		Steven Pinker has made a glittering career for himself since he left Montreal as a young man; studying and then teaching at Harvard, Stanford and finally the Michigan Institute of Technology.
		Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate exposes the nature nurture debate and examines the very foundation of human identity.
		Pinker argues that intellectuals have ignored what we are when talking about who we are, denying what is at the very heart of our being - our innate human nature.
	www.penguin.co.uk /nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,0_1000037824_BIO,00.html (2422 words)

	TIME Magazine: TIME 100: Steven Pinker
		Britain's Financial Times once described Steven Pinker as "a handsome man" with a hairstyle that "works equally well for Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant." But even if the Harvard psychologist didn't look like a rock star, he would still play to packed houses on the lecture circuit.
		Pinker is on the forefront of an intellectual sea change.
		Pinker, along with others in the young field of evolutionary psychology, disagrees.
	www.time.com /time/subscriber/2004/time100/scientists/100pinker.html (345 words)

	Steven Pinker on transsexualism
		His writing is also used by J. Michael Bailey in his Human Sexuality class, and Dr. Pinker is a member of the Human Biodiversity Institute with Bailey.
		Pinker is quoted twice in Joseph Henry Press publicity for J Michael Bailey's The Man Who Would Be Queen, though he's only attributed once.
		Steven Pinker argues that much of who we are, our personalities, our intelligence, our developmental “stages” are mostly a deep-seated program inherited through our genes.
	www.tsroadmap.com /info/steven-pinker.html (473 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)