How The Mind Works

Steven Pinker is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies language acquisition in children. He trained at McGill University and Harvard University, and he was on the faculty at Harvard and Stanford universities before landing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He trained in experimental psychology and has expanded his training to cognitive and developmental questions.

Pinker’s approach to how the mind works show both his knowledge of language and his psychological training. He moves beyond his field in looking at evidence for natural selection and why we have specific skills, but most of his writing draws on psychological constructs, such as emotions and relationships, and psychological approaches to studying them. His use of the computational theory of mind as the basis for how the mind works reveals his training and approach to science and the mind. His research into other fields and ability to connect those fields to his argument for how the mind works helps support his ideas because of the way many disparate fields of study work together.