How the Mind Works (ISBN 0-393-31848-6) is a book by American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, published in 1997. The book attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms. Drawing heavily on the paradigm of evolutionary psychology first articulated by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Pinker covers subjects as diverse as vision, emotion, feminism, and, in the final chapter, "the meaning of life." He also advocates the computational theory of mind. He criticizes Difference feminism in his book because he believes scientific research has shown that women and men differ little or not at all in their moral reasoning. This book was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

Carol Gilligan has become a gender-feminist icon because of her claim that men and women guide their moral reasoning by different principles: men think about rights and justice; women have feelings of compassion, nurturing, and peaceful accommodation. If true, it would disqualify women from becoming constitutional lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and moral philosophers, who make their living by reasoning about rights and justice. But it is not true. Many studies have tested Gilligan's hypothesis and found that men and women differ little or not at all in their moral reasoning. (Jaffe & Hyde, 2000; Sommers, 1994; Walker, 1984) So difference feminism offers women the worst of both worlds: invidious claims without scientific support.^[1]

External links

• Pinker's website on ''How the Mind Works''
• Streaming video of a lecture based on the book
• "The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism" by Jerry Fodor, a critical review of How the Mind Works
• "The mind doesn't work that way", abstract of a book by Jerry Fodor in response to How the Mind Works

References

1. ↑ Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, Chapter on Gender.