The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

An interesting read.

Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought Steven Pinker in his Preface to this examination of language function warns the reader that `the early chapters occasionally dip into technical topics.' That puts it mildly, for this is such a thorough and detailed analysis of the thing that makes us human that one is tempted to use the term `exhaustive' - except that, as Pinker shows us, nothing in this world, including space, time and substance is exhaustive. Even one schooled in linguistic analysis would be sorely tested, though surely fascinated, by the author's exploration of how we acquire and use the tool that enables man to function in a world that without him makes no sense. With over 450 pages of closely argued and abundantly illustrated verbal and diagrammatical text the casual reader will inevitably struggle to keep afloat. The 60 pages of Notes, References and Index alone bear witness to the range of Steven Pinker's research. And if Pinker is not enough, the reader is invited to delve further into language theory - alphabetically from Abarbanell to Zwicky (yes, these are, I believe, real people) via Hume, Kant and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Mercifully, for the layman the book is replete with homely examples of language in daily use. Thus the author shows us that someone we call William Shakespeare, whatever scholarly dissenters may maintain, did write Hamlet, many other plays and 154 sonnets, that names do mean something. He concludes that names are `ways to identify unbroken chains of person-to-person transmission through time, anchored to a specific event of dubbing in the past.' I must confess to having recourse to the occasional re-reading of sentences like the above, but then I am not accustomed to thinking much about the relation between language and thought. Language is the essential tool we take for granted, but it has a history and a future, is volatile and an essential part of everyday existence, providing not only knowledge and information, but solace and humour. In which last this book abounds, despite the high seriousness of the topic; from known witticisms to strip cartoons this book is alive with fun and games: - Mother: `Would you like a piece of toast for breakfast?' Boy: `I'd rather have a whole one, thanks.' A middle-aged couple staring at a notice: `Please don't feed the duck.' He asks her if there isn't something strange about the notice. She asks why, so he begins to explain: `Well, "Duck" is singular. It seems if you don't want people feeding ducks, you'd make it plural: "Please do not feed the -" Final frame in the cartoon: QUACK! comes a voice from the pond. Focus on the notice. `Never mind,' says the man.

what a writer!

What goes on in the mind. Essential to know its fragility.

Pinker is a very clear speaker and writer and his books on language and linguistics range from ideal for the non-linguistic student/reader to definitely for the specialist. This leans very much towards the latter and is not an easy read. However, to anyone with a grounding in Vygotsky, Chomsky, post-Chomsky and early Pinker, it is a very interesting read but in "Fifty Thousand Innate Concepts", having dealt with many of them, he comments: " ... each of the radical theories about language and thought refutes one of the others in a game of rock-paper-scissors". He also quotes Sassoon: "Words are fools Who follow blindly, once they get a lead. But thoughts are kingfishers that haunt the pools Of quiet, seldom seen". Looking at language which would seem, by its very design, "to be a tool with well-defined and limited functionality" (P 178) he considers the limits of language, metaphor and the process of naming. In an amusing chapter, entitled "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" he looks at humanity's curse words and the taboos we build around them. (Here, I must admit to some speed reading to discover what they were!) Finally, taking us back to Plato's cave, he discusses how language allowed us to describe the cave but also the ways in which language allowed us to venture out of it to be free from its limitations; firstly through metaphor, secondly through the combinational power of language. As a dual tool, these linguistic features by combining analogies and uniting words in new ways, allow the expression of thoughts outside our cave. Pinker is an original thinker who uses language very clearly to elucidate itself.

Bought it as I was some way through reading my sons paperback version when he moved away from home and took it with him. Interesting thinker, is Mr Steven Pinker

Stephen Pinker's books is intended to give us a view of human nature that emerges from the study of language. Successive chapters look at a range of topics very familiar to philosophers who have theorised about these things without the benefit of the studies psychologists and others have carried out in recent years - do we have innate ideas and is that the source of our ability to use language? does our use of language shape our view of the world? what is our concept of causation? how does metaphor work? how do names (of individuals and natural kinds) refer to things in the world? how does swearing and obscenity work? and what about 'conversational implicature', ie how we use language in ways that make it clear what we mean without saying precisely and literally what we mean. The treatments of these subjects are generally persuasive, though the discussion is (for all the liveliness of Pinker's style) quite complex and hard going. So: we do have thought prior to speech, we have views about causation and the nature of agency that are probably quite askew from any kind of physics (Newtonian as much as Einstein and beyond - we think instead in terms of 'agonists' and 'antagonists'), metaphors are sometimes indeed dead, sometimes alive and sometimes literary, and there are wider reasons (to do with e.g. authority relationships or membership of a community) why we might not always say precisely and squarely what we mean. And swear words don't seem to work like other locutions grammatically and are more like ejaculations - but ones that place us in a social context as much as ones that express e.g. anger and so on in parts of the brain that otherwise don't much go in for language. These are interesting conclusions, even if you have read the musings of philosophers on all this (Pinker cites Hume and Lewis on causation; Grice on conversational implicature, Kant on the nature of knowledge, Kripke and Putnam on rigid designators, and he might cite Davidson on metaphor and self-deception). It's probably more interesting if those ideas are new to the reader, however. And I suspect it would be more interesting again if Pinker were to link up this theory to some wider questions - notably how much of a hold does our 'conscious reason' have on our behaviour (see for example the books of Jonathan Haidt) and how far is our language linked to 'slow' as opposed to 'fast' thinking? Overall not nearly as gripping - and not nearly as revelatory about human life - as his more recent book The Better Angels of Our Nature.

Not the simplest of journeys but very, very definitely worth taking...

As a layman, I started following this white rabbit due to two unrelated and disturbing hints I got long ago: Ortega y Gasset stating German language grammar was the main reason for the succes of Philosophy -considering other languages not so prone to success in that area- My maths teacher feeling the 'not so logical' Spanish language as an explanation for so many people failing her tests. No endendí nada (literally: I did not understand nothing) is a wrong logical structure -two negations equals one affirmation- Mr. Spock thinking the boy grabbed the topic, at least partially, but the guy meaning he got no hint of it. Self-contained, positive and illustrative, I really enjoyed The stuff of Thought. Hope you do so!

The book came without printing mistakes and exactly as advertised.

I learned mich about out english grammer.

Nice read. Just wouldn't purchase anything from PBC Distributors. Had a terrible experience.

Je trouve cet ouvrage passionnant. Il donne à penser. L'auteur fait preuve d'une grande pédagogie pour faciliter la compréhension des néophytes, ce qui est mon cas. Un bon niveau d'anglais me semble parfois nécessaire (ou un bon dictionnaire) pour saisir la subtilité de certains propos. Les nombreux exemples et les illustrations permettent cependant d'y parvenir sans difficultés.