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

338 I HOW THE MIND WORKSSo is the mind logical in the logician's sense? Sometimes yes, sometimesno. A better question is, Is the mind well-designed in the biologist'ssense? Here the "yes" can be a bit stronger. Logic by itself can spinoff trivial truths and miss consequential ones. The mind does seem touse logical rules, but they are recruited by the processes of languageunderstanding, mixed with world knowledge, and supplemented orsuperseded by special inference rules appropriate to the content.Mathematics is part of our birthright. One-week-old babies perk upwhen a scene changes from two to three items or vice versa. Infants intheir first ten months notice how many items (up to four) are in a display,and it doesn't matter whether the items are homogeneous or heterogeneous,bunched together or spread out, dots or household objects, evenwhether they are objects or sounds. According to recent experiments bythe psychologist Karen Wynn, five-month-old infants even do simplearithmetic. They are shown Mickey Mouse, a screen covers him up, anda second Mickey is placed behind it. The babies expect to see two Mickeyswhen the screen falls and are surprised if it reveals only one. Otherbabies are shown two Mickeys and one is removed from behind thescreen. These babies expect to see one Mickey and are surprised to findtwo. By eighteen months children know that numbers not only differ butfall into an order; for example, the children can be taught to choose thepicture with fewer dots. Some of these abilities are found in, or can betaught to, some kinds of animals.Can infants and animals really count? The question may soundabsurd because these creatures have no words. But registering quantitiesdoes not depend on language. Imagine opening a faucet for one secondevery time you hear a drumbeat. The amount of water in the glass wouldrepresent the number of beats. The brain might have a similar mechanism,which would accumulate not water but neural pulses or the numberof active neurons. Infants and many animals appear to be equippedwith this simple kind of counter. It would have many potential selectiveadvantages, which depend on the animal's niche. They range from estimatingthe rate of return of foraging in different patches to solving problemssuch as "Three bears went into the cave; two came out. Should I goin?"r