
How the Mind Works
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Narrated by:
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Mel Foster
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By:
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Steven Pinker
About this listen
In this delightful, acclaimed best seller, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness?
How the Mind Works synthesizes the most satisfying explanations of our mental life from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and other fields to explain what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and contemplate the mysteries of life. This new edition of Pinker’s bold and buoyant classic is updated with a new foreword by the author.
©2011 Steven Pinker (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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-
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-
-
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-
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Critic reviews
People who viewed this also viewed...
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-
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-
-
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-
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-
-
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-
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-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.
-
-
Steven Pinker's Frozen Worldview from the 90s
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By: Steven Pinker
-
The Stuff of Thought
- Language as a Window into Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Dean Olsher
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.
-
-
Pinker is truly a brilliant and lucid explainer...
- By Rudi on 06-17-09
By: Steven Pinker
-
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- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
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- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
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Overall
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Performance
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Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
-
-
We live in the best of all times
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By: Steven Pinker
-
Words and Rules
- The Ingredients of Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 2000, Words and Rules remains one of Pinker's most provocative and accessible books, illuminating the fascinating relationship between the brain, the mind, and how language makes us humans.
-
-
Amazing how much irregular verbs can teach.
- By Tristan on 04-10-16
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
-
-
Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By ejf211 on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....
-
-
Absolutely Amazing and Interesting
- By J. C. on 10-28-12
By: Steven Pinker
-
Rationality
- What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.
-
-
Steven Pinker's Frozen Worldview from the 90s
- By Ryan Booth on 11-12-21
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Stuff of Thought
- Language as a Window into Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Dean Olsher
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.
-
-
Pinker is truly a brilliant and lucid explainer...
- By Rudi on 06-17-09
By: Steven Pinker
-
Enlightenment Now
- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
-
-
We live in the best of all times
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By: Steven Pinker
-
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .
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-
-
A great book, done a great injustice by the audio
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By: Steven Pinker
-
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- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
-
-
I'd kill for another book this good
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When Men Behave Badly
- The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault
- By: David M. Buss
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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“An exceptional book” (Helen Fisher) by a leading evolutionary psychologist and sex researcher that lays out a new theory of sexual conflict, exposing the roots of the dangerous dynamics that underpin men’s predatory behavior - and what can be done to address it.
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Interesting ideas, but argumentation incomplete
- By Kindle Customer on 07-03-21
By: David M. Buss
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Think with Pinker
- How to Be a Better Critical Thinker
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Steven Pinker, Various, Tim Harford, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
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Cognitive scientist Professor Steven Pinker has spent his life thinking about thinking, and now he wants us to join him. With the aid of his critical thinking toolkit, he hopes to help us make smarter choices, become more rational, gain a greater understanding of the confused world we live in—and maybe even become better citizens. In this fascinating series, produced in partnership with the Open University, he examines the different ways the human brain can be tripped up, from understanding probability to the difference between correlation and causation.
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not all pinkerton works are created equally
- By Dick Grayson on 06-01-24
By: Steven Pinker
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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The Selfish Gene
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.
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Better than print!
- By J. D. May on 07-31-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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Wonderful Life
- The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
- By: Stephen Jay Gould
- Narrated by: Jonathan Sleep
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book, Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
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Science made interesting
- By An Old Crow on 09-13-23
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Thinking Like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making
- By: Randall Bartlett, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Randall Bartlett
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Original Recording
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Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, with these 12 fast-moving and crystal clear lectures, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.
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Great for beginners, nothing you for an economist
- By V. Taras on 07-08-15
By: Randall Bartlett, and others
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Who's in Charge?
- Free Will and the Science of the Brain
- By: Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions.
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Use Your Credit On "Who's In Charge"
- By Dan on 04-03-12
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The Ape That Understood the Universe
- How the Mind and Culture Evolve
- By: Steve Stewart-Williams
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ape That Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory.
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Behave
- The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
- By: Robert Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 26 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
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Insightful
- By Doug Hay on 07-27-17
By: Robert Sapolsky
Complete
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A Rich and Insightful Landmark Tome
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Some parts were hard to get through
The younger generation won’t know what he’s talking about when he gets to the part seeing something pop out of the art you stare at
Some of it was good
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Relevant to better understanding.
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This is a long book. Fortunately with Audible I was able to listen to it in about a week and a half. Mel Foster is an excellent narrator. Although I can't say that I grasped or agreed with every subject Pinker tackled in this volume, he certainly gives you plenty to think about. As a Christian I found Pinker's promotion of natural selection as the "creator" of all living matter unsupported and weak in evidence. Common ancestry or common creator? Nevertheless the discussion of psychology and thought development was quite interesting.
Lots of Food for Thought
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What did you love best about How the Mind Works?
The author explors the subject in many unique ways. He opens the reader's mind to show how it works.What did you like best about this story?
His quirkey humorWhich character – as performed by Mel Foster – was your favorite?
The reader is excellent. Every word is clear.If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
A ride through the brain to explore the mind.Any additional comments?
This is our second Pinker book. A gifted researcher, a brilliant mind, and an interesting writer.Outstsnding author reveals human Mind
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Brilliant!
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Great book
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Mind altering read
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Still, Pinker is always interesting to read/listen to.
And the narrator did him justice.
Overall a good book.
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