October 26, 2007
Steven Pinker, a renowned cognitive neuroscientist, a research psychologist, and is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research on cognition and language won the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences and two prizes from the American Psychological Association. He has also received several honorary doctorates and many awards for graduate and undergraduate teaching, general achievement, and his critically acclaimed books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Blank Slate. He is also a Humanist Laureate of CFI’s International Academy of Humanism. His newest book is The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Pinker explores what our use of language can tell us about human nature. He discusses our use of metaphors, and what concepts may be innate, how the “language of thought” may be hard-wired in our brains. He also explains how to avoid the pitfalls of such hard-wiring, using the methods of science as the model.
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Comments from the CFI Forums
It reminded me of Michael Shermer’s outline of scientific writing.
Michael Shermer:
Sadly, too many professional scientists think level one is the only legitimate form of science writing, and that anything else is simply “dumbing down.”
Zarcus - can you give a reference for the Michael Schermer quote. I agree that all three forms of writing are important—I think many scientists support all three levels, but I also think Schermer is well-networked and well-informed on this point. Is he talking about the “dumbing down” of Scientific American? Or is he talking about problems he has had from professional scientists? (and to paraphrase Richard Feynman “why does he care what other people think?")
Hi There,
For an interesting perspective on the role of metaphor in our interactions between ourselves and our orientation towards “the world” see also Jan Zwicky’s “Wisdom and Metaphor”.
b
I enjoyed the show as well. I’m currently re-reading The Language Instinct so the timing was great for me.
I wonder, though, if metaphors are a crucial device for our brains to engage concepts beyond the physical and social worlds they evolved to deal with, and yet if they need to be stripped of their misleading elements, as Pinker says, how does one decide what is the truthful and what the misleading compnent to an entrenched metaphor. We often talk about religion as a set of metaphors and, from the memetic point of view a very successful one. Yet we also tend to agree here that these are pretty seriously misleading metaphors. Any thoughts as to how we check our own metaphors for accuracy?
As I use them, the metaphores are resources to explain the behaviour of object A in terms of a better known object B. I think that as more aspect of A’s behaviour can be explained using B ‘semantics’, the better the metaphor is. It is inevitable to find divergences between A and B, as soon you can find them, the worst the metaphor is. I’d say, to take the example from the show, that ‘the course of events’ is a poor metaphor because a course means a somewhat fixed route, while the history has not a defined path.
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Because I have more doubt than certainties in this topic, my possition will change as the discussion progresses. 
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