The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics)

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics) | Steven Pinker | Chomsky Meets Gladwell

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The Language Insti...

	The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics) Steven Pinker Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2000 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 110 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Outstanding!

I've intended to write a review about this book (and the others I've read by him).

While I can't agree with all of his observations (or more accurately ... "points of view") Mr. Pinker is one smart and insightful thinker. He's a good writer, too, but I'll put up with lousy prose if the notion is worth reading about.

If you're new to the topic (c'est moi!), I'd surely recommend reading his books in the order he wrote them along with some Chomsky. My first introduction to his work was The Blank Slate (a very scary book), but after reading that I went back to Pinker's beginning to educate myself in his point of view.

The The Language Instinct provides more than just a peek at who we learn language, but inserts the formulas for learning in general, the commonality of different cultures and even different evolutionary eras. His sometimes touching, sometimes clinical, always vivid recounts that he discovered through his intensive and provocative research about the deaf, the voiceless, the varieties, the cultural barriers that have all been crossed because human beings share this one universal characteristic of "language" which is truly "instinctive" gives a person pause to reconsider WHAT ELSE? about our species is beyond the "nurture" and is mostly "nature"!

I've read all his books through The Blank Slate at least twice. I still can't come to terms with his entire point of view, but I get a little closer each time.

You won't quit thinking about it, once you read his books!

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Chomsky Meets Gladwell

I stumbled upon this title last summer while searching Amazon for something interesting to read. Skipping over it at that point for one reason or another, however, I was again recommended this text as a supplement for a Linguistics course in which I am enrolled this fall. This is certainly no textbook in Linguistics, but it does serve as an interesting, easy-to-read work that makes contemporary, Chomsky-driven Linguistics (especially with regard to Universal Grammar and Cognitive Science) highly accessible. Pinker's writing, while sometimes manic and even unclear, still manages to captivate and seize attention easily in the same manner as other recent nonfiction texts (Malcolm Gladwell's are two such examples). With an intended audience of linguistic-laymen readers, Pinker has certainly succeeded in making boring textbook linguistics interesting, in furnishing his text with pertinent examples, and in bringing contemporary linguistics to the masses. As other reviewers have noted, one should remain skeptical and critical of Pinker's proposed theories (as is necessary with all such writing), but I would certainly recommend this text to anyone even slightly interested in the subject.

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Left-Brainers Lack Empathy.

The language instinct is a set of interrelated capacities and functions in the brain and body that produce speech (and also writing and signing). Pinker calls this unity of parts and potentialities "modules." This book is his effort to make the case for his theory of how our language module operates.

Pinker seems to overstate the novelty of the notion that structures and functions in the brain form modules. The theory that natural selection has produced a brain with particular structures that perform specialized functions has its roots in Nineteenth Century neurology, when Broca's Area and Wernicke's Area were named. Hence, there is nothing new in the idea that the brain has "modules," which are neuro-pathways connecting parts within the brain, and connecting certain parts of the brain to specific parts in the body.

Pinker's main project is to show how the love of his life can be used to explain the workings of language. He loves the idea that what ordinary folks think of as the mind, is actually a highly sophisticated computational device. For him, the mind is like a hand-held computer, but with two exceptions. First, it is more convenient to carry it in one's head, which is why nature put it there. Second, it is far more sophisticated than any computer yet devised (although the artificial intelligence fans are catching up). Mind, then, is the computational brain in operation. Language is an instance of these operations.

I see at least two huge problems with Pinker's starting point. Since he never addresses these problems, he does not overcome them. Therefore, in my opinion, he has failed at his aim of explaining how language works.

First, to make the points that Pinker sets out to make, he must go to extremes in his presentation, which result in an awkward scientific theory rather than an elegant one. He must engage in a little intellectual hedging, if not dishonesty, and use such mentalistic terms as "meaning," "intention," "intuition," and "mind," to make his case for language use as a function of computations. He uses these terms throughout the book. Yet, there are no entries for these terms in either his glossary or his index. Small wonder, these terms are inconsistent with his beloved mechanical model of mind (as being a computational brain). This tactic is reminiscent of FDR hiding his crutches from public view. It requires quite a bit of charity from the reader.

His bias also leads him to devise explanations that first function to preserve his interpretive framework, and only secondly to describe and explain the operations of his chosen subject matter, language. Consider the mechanistic metaphors he uses, so that he can twist the subject matter to fit his general theory of mind as machine. He mentions, for example, that the brain is "wired," for speech, and various communication "programs." Of course, the brain has neither wires nor programs in it. It is a glob of gelatin-like tissue with trillions of nerves forming axons, dendrites, and synapses. The brain is in fact an organism, not a machine. It functions as organisms function, not as machines function.

To describe and explain how organisms operate requires a theoretical framework that is appropriate to organisms. Hence, the machine framework just will not do. Using it is like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. The computer framework is a great fit for explaining computer operations, but its inapt for human operations. Thus, Pinker's approach reveals a great lack of empathy insofar as it disregards the intuitively apparent existence of such mental qualities as mind, meaning, intention, etc. In this, Pinker's theories are no more than an extension of the widely discredited and out of date behaviorism.

Pinker has a long discussion about the "parser" in our brains. It is a device that computes which words or phrases constitute the head, or main subject, of a communication. But he makes no mention of the fact that communication begins with the intent of one person to convey some meaning to another person. Hence, the main subject of a communication derives its existence not from its place in a computational diagram (Pinker loves diagrams), but from the intention of the speaker. The listener gets it using his own knowledge of the language plus a little human empathy. The computational model assumes an extreme left-brain bias, which cannot account for the understanding of poetry or music lyrics, or the symbolic meaning conveyed by art.

My second big objection to Pinker's thesis is that it contains a poison pill, which is definitely toxic to anyone who swallows his theory. What is implied about a person's opinion of humanity when he insists that the language module and our minds are but computational machines? A machine is a thing, and worthy of value primarily to the extent that it is useful. Thus, to say that humans are machines, even though far more complex than the other kind of machines, is to impute use value to humans. But very few self-respecting humans would accept being valued solely for their use. Human dignity demands that people be valued for their uniqueness, and that this be a different category of value than their usefulness. Pinker does not see the difference.

Incredibly, this value blindness leads him to conclude his book with a preposterous political claim. He proclaims that his discovery that all human language is based on an inherited set of universal computational devices and rules will, once widely taught and understood, foster "human unity and brotherhood." But what kind of "unity and brotherhood" can be based on mutual denigration? There is a contradiction of value logic in the new Pinker social contract that says you value me as a machine, and I'll value you as a machine, and on the basis of this equality we will live in unity and brotherhood.

One more point: the jokes are great! If there is a "cognitive instinct" for humor, then Pinker's got it. A psychologist with a great sense of humor, but who is devoid of empathy, should stick to writing humor, and forget about psychology.

For my critique of Pinker's Blank Slate see the Empathic Science Institute website.

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