Who here has read any of Steven Pinker's books?

30-03-2010 01:05PM #1

The guy is able to distill complex, difficult material so well. I've never read such good books as his.

I've recently read some critical reviews of his book The Blank Slate, and, having read that book in great detail for a thesis I wrote, I can tell you that 95% of the "criticisms" are irritatingly off the mark: they have not fully grasped the arguments, they're arguing against straw men, and they skew it through the filter of their political and moral lens.

Mary Midley is a particularly bad one. Like most people overeducated in philosophy, she seems to lack the ability to read anything outside her field with a degree of objective, analytical rigour.

33% God · 30-03-2010 06:15PM

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

The guy is able to distill complex, difficult material so well. I've never read such good books as his.

I've recently read some critical reviews of his book The Blank Slate, and, having read that book in great detail for a thesis I wrote, I can tell you that 95% of the "criticisms" are irritatingly off the mark: they have not fully grasped the arguments, they're arguing against straw men, and they skew it through the filter of their political and moral lens.

Mary Midley is a particularly bad one. Like most people overeducated in philosophy, she seems to lack the ability to read anything outside her field with a degree of objective, analytical rigour.

I'm really like Steven Pinker. His books are incredibly readable and he constructs his chapters and explanations in a very easy to follow way.

Although on the topic of strawmen, Pinker is guilty of that himself at times. Most unfairly in his criticisms of the Whorf Hypothesis in The Language Instinct . It's still a very readable book though. The idea of constructing a chapter on linguistic determinism around the idea of Orwell's Newspeak was very cool.

30-03-2010 11:10PM

33% God wrote: »

I'm really like Steven Pinker. His books are incredibly readable and he constructs his chapters and explanations in a very easy to follow way.

Although on the topic of strawmen, Pinker is guilty of that himself at times. Most unfairly in his criticisms of the Whorf Hypothesis in The Language Instinct . It's still a very readable book though. The idea of constructing a chapter on linguistic determinism around the idea of Orwell's Newspeak was very cool.

In The Stuff of Thought, he talks about how strawmen are pretty much here to stay - part and parcel of academia, and to watch out for them in his own work too. That said, he goes into much further detail on the Whorf hypothesis, despite having "given it an obituary" in the Language Instinct.

Who here has read any of Steven Pinker's books?

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