Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

186 J HOW THE MIND WORKSparadoxes like Zeno's beguiling demonstrations that motion is impossible,or make us dizzy as they ponder mysteries like sentience and freewill. Just as an ethologist unmasks an animal's instincts with clevermanipulations of its world, such as slipping a mechanical bee into a hiveor rearing a chick in a planetarium, psychologists can unmask humanreasoning instincts by couching problems in devilish ways, as we shallsee in Chapter 5.THE COGNITIVE NICHEAmbrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary defines our species as follows:Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinkshe is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupationis extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however,multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the wholehabitable earth and Canada.Homo sapiens sapiens is indeed an unprecedented animal, with manyzoologically unique or extreme traits. Humans achieve their goals bycomplex chains of behavior, assembled on the spot and tailored to thesituation. They plan the behavior using cognitive models of the causalstructure of the world. They learn these models in their lifetimes andcommunicate them through language, which allows the knowledge toaccumulate within a group and over generations. They manufacture anddepend upon many kinds of tools. They exchange goods and favors overlong periods of time. Food is transported long distances, processedextensively, stored, and shared. Labor is divided between the sexes.Humans form large, structured coalitions, especially among males, andcoalitions wage war against each other. Humans use fire. Kinship systemsare complex and vary with other aspects of their lifestyles. Matingrelations are negotiated by kin, often by groups exchanging daughters.Ovulation is concealed, and females may choose to have sex at any timerather than at certain points in a reproductive cycle.A few of these traits are found among some of the great apes, but to amuch lesser degree, and most are not found at all. And humans haverediscovered traits that are rare among primates but found in other ani-