Mind Quotes by Steven Pinker

the mind is a neural computer

— Steven Pinker

It's misleading to essentialize an entire society as if it were a single mind.

— Steven Pinker

Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

— Steven Pinker

The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high.

— Steven Pinker

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

— Steven Pinker

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

— Steven Pinker

Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that…

— Steven Pinker

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture…

— Steven Pinker

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

The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it, and it furnishes them with motives…

— Steven Pinker

Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its…

— Steven Pinker

Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative,…

— Steven Pinker

When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power…

— Steven Pinker

The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred…

— Steven Pinker

I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to…

— Steven Pinker

Education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don't have to…

— Steven Pinker

Nature is a hanging judge," goes an old saying. Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily…

— Steven Pinker

“Thinking is computation, I claim, but that does not mean that the computer is a good metaphor for the mind. The mind…

— Steven Pinker

“Perhaps we should rejoice that people’s emotions aren’t designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefit one’s…

— Steven Pinker

Maybe philosophical problems are hard not because they are divine or irreducible or meaningless or workaday science, but because the mind of…

— Steven Pinker

Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best…

— Steven Pinker

“Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the facts…

— Steven Pinker

Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about…

— Steven Pinker