We can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Of course, genes can't pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
But the newest research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don't depend on information coming in… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals, and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots;… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The reason I'm not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“If a gene could build a brain that could tell when copies of itself were sitting in another animal's gonads, it would… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
No one knows what the nongenetic causes of individuality are. Perhaps people are shaped by modifications of genes that take place after… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
According to a recent study of the brains of identical and fraternal twins, differences in the amount of gray matter in the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I don't think there was a thunderclap or a divine spark that suddenly made one species smart. You can see, in our… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The elegant study... is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience . Every aspect of thought and emotion is rooted in… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content. — Steven Pinker Copy Share
The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“The biblical story of the binding of Isaac shows that human sacrifice was far from unthinkable in the 1st millennium BCE. The Israelites boasted… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“The obvious cure for the tragic shortcomings of human intuition in a high-tech world is education. And this offers priorities for educational policy: to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
“In some eras, self-control defines the paragon of a decent person: a grown-up, a person of dignity, a lady or a gentleman, a mensch.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from… — Steven Pinker Copy Share
