Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. - Noam Chomsky When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

Problems and Mysterious

Every idea may turn out to be wrong, but that would be progress, because our old ideas were too vapid to be wrong.

Wrong Ideas Are a Progress 

All of human psychology is days to be explained by a single, omnipotent cause: a large brain, culture, language, socialization, learning, complexity, self-organisation, neural-network dynamics.

A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace.

Man's capacity for evil is never far from our minds, and it is easy to think that evil just comes along with intelligence as part of its very essence.

Our common sense about other people is a kind of intuitive psychology - we try to infer people's beliefs and desires from what they do and try to predict or they will do from our gursses about their beliefs and desires.Our intuitive psychology, though, must make the assumption that other people have beliefs and desires.

Our mental solves its unsolvable problem by a leap of faith about how the world works, by making assumptions that are indispensable but indefensible - the only defence being that the assumptions worked well enough in the world of our ancestors.

To understand is not to forgive.

Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only by recognising them as separate can we have them both.

In this book the author, a cognitive scientist explains how the brain evolved to store and use information, allowing our ancestors to control their environment, and why we think and act as we do. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. This work explains many of the imponderables of everyday life. Why does a face look more attractive with makeup? How do "Magic-Eye" 3-D stereograms work? Why do we feel that a run of heads makes the coin more likely to land tails? Why is the thought of eating worms disgusting? Why do men challenge each other to duels and murder their ex-wives? Why are children bratty? Why do fools fall in love? Why are we soothed by paintings and music? And why do puzzles like the self, free will, and consciousness leave us dizzy? The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. The author rehabilitates unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection. And he challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, that creativity springs from the unconscious, that nature is good and modern society corrupting, and that art and religion are expressions of our higher spiritual yearnings.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mindfulness

Mindfulness

books

Books

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

How the Mind Works

Jagadeesan Janarthanam