How the Mind Works - michaeljgoodnight.com

34 J HOW THE MIND WORKS
ingless, but I think it confuses two issues: what all minds have in common,
and how minds can differ. The vapid statements above can be
made intelligible by replacing "How X works" with "What makes X work
better than Y":
The usefulness of a computer depends on both the power of its
processor and the expertise of the user.
The speed of a car depends on the engine, the fuel, and the skill of the
driver. All are important factors.
The quality of sound coming from a CD player depends on two crucial
variables: the player's mechanical and electronic design, and the
quality of the original recording. Neither can be ignored.
When we are interested in haw much better one system functions
than a similar one, it is reasonable to gloss over the causal chains inside
each system and tally up the factors that make the whole thing fast or
slow, hi-fi or low-fi. And this ranking of people—to determine who enters
medical school, or who gets the job—is where the framing of nature versus
nurture comes from.
But this book is about how the mind works, not about why some people's
minds might work a bit better in certain ways than other people's
minds. The evidence suggests that humans everywhere on the planet see,
talk, and think about objects and people in the same basic way. The difference
between Einstein and a high school dropout is trivial compared to
the difference between the high school dropout and the best robot in existence,
or between the high school dropout and a chimpanzee. That is
the mystery I want to address. Nothing could be farther from my subject
i matter than a comparison between the means of overlapping bell curves
\ for some crude consumer index like IQ. And for this reason, the relative
importance of innateness and learning is a phony issue.
An emphasis on innate design should not, by the way, be confused
with the search for "a gene for" this or that mental organ. Think of the
genes and putative genes that have made the headlines: genes for muscular
dystrophy, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's, alcoholism, schizophrenia,
manic-depressive disorder, obesity, violent outbursts, dyslexia,
bed-wetting, and some kinds of retardation. They are disord&rs, all of
them. There have been no discoveries of a gene for civility, language,
memory, motor control, intelligence, or other complete mental systems,
and there probably won't ever be. The reason was summed up by the
politician Sam Rayburn: Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a