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

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338 I HOW THE MIND WORKSSo is <strong>the</strong> mind logical in <strong>the</strong> logician's sense? Sometimes yes, sometimesno. A better question is, Is <strong>the</strong> mind well-designed in <strong>the</strong> biologist'ssense? Here <strong>the</strong> "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 <strong>the</strong>y are recruited by <strong>the</strong> processes of languageunderstanding, mixed with world knowledge, and supplemented orsuperseded by special inference rules appropriate to <strong>the</strong> content.Ma<strong>the</strong>matics is part of our birthright. One-week-old babies perk upwhen a scene changes from two to three items or vice versa. Infants in<strong>the</strong>ir first ten months notice how many items (up to four) are in a display,and it doesn't matter whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> items are homogeneous or heterogeneous,bunched toge<strong>the</strong>r or spread out, dots or household objects, evenwhe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong>y are objects or sounds. According to recent experiments by<strong>the</strong> 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 <strong>the</strong> screen falls and are surprised if it reveals only one. O<strong>the</strong>rbabies are shown two Mickeys and one is removed from behind <strong>the</strong>screen. 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, <strong>the</strong> children can be taught to choose <strong>the</strong>picture with fewer dots. Some of <strong>the</strong>se abilities are found in, or can betaught to, some kinds of animals.Can infants and animals really count? The question may soundabsurd because <strong>the</strong>se 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 <strong>the</strong> glass wouldrepresent <strong>the</strong> number of beats. The brain might have a similar mechanism,which would accumulate not water but neural pulses or <strong>the</strong> 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 <strong>the</strong> animal's niche. They range from estimating<strong>the</strong> rate of return of foraging in different patches to solving problemssuch as "Three bears went into <strong>the</strong> cave; two came out. Should I goin?"r

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