Portrait of Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

Cognitive Psychologist, Psycholinguist, and Author
Born: September 18, 1954

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science writer known for his clear, sometimes provocative explorations of how the mind works. A professor at Harvard University, Pinker has built his career around explaining complex questions of language, thought, and human nature in ways that non-specialists can grasp—whether it’s why children learn to speak, how the brain shapes morality, or whether the world is actually getting better. His trademark mix of data-driven argument, evolutionary psychology, and plain-spoken style has made him both a best-selling author and a lightning rod in intellectual debates.

Pinker’s books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Better Angels of Our Nature, have sparked conversations well beyond academia, often challenging common assumptions about violence, progress, and the human condition. Admirers hail him as a voice of rational optimism, pointing to his emphasis on reason, science, and Enlightenment values, while critics accuse him of being too rosy-eyed or dismissive of systemic problems. Either way, Pinker has carved out a role as one of the most visible public intellectuals of our time: a psychologist who insists that understanding how we think is the first step toward understanding where we are headed.

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Mentioned in 2 documents

Donald Hoffman

Fusions of Consciousness

This theory proposes that conscious experiences and subjects exist beyond spacetime as fundamental entities with dynamics described by Markov chains. It shows how these conscious agents can combine, fuse, and have their experiences merge to create new agents and qualia. Spacetime and particle interactions are proposed to be projections encoding the dynamics of communicating conscious agents, rather than being truly fundamental.

Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham

The Evolutionary Mind

What could have been the cause for the breakthrough in the evolution of human consciousness around 50,000 years ago? Part of the Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable held at the University of California.