Editing Steven Pinker (section)

===Human cognition and natural language===
{{main|The Language Instinct|Words and Rules|How the Mind Works|The Blank Slate|The Stuff of Thought}}

<!--[[File:AmericanBeaver.JPG|thumb|upright=1.3|Pinker argues that the human faculty for [[language]] is as much an instinct as a beaver's ability to build dams.]]-->[[File:Steven Pinker CSICon 2018 Enlightenment Now- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.jpg|thumb|283x283px|Pinker at [[CSICon]] in 2018, hosted by the [[Committee for Skeptical Inquiry]]]]
Pinker's 1994 ''[[The Language Instinct]]'' was the first of several books to combine [[cognitive science]] with [[behavioral genetics]] and [[evolutionary psychology]]. It introduces the science of language and popularizes [[Noam Chomsky]]'s theory that language is an innate faculty of mind, with the controversial twist that the faculty for language evolved by natural selection as an adaptation for communication. Pinker criticizes several widely held ideas about language – that it needs to be taught, that people's grammar is poor and getting worse with new ways of speaking, the [[Linguistic relativity|Sapir–Whorf hypothesis]] that language limits the kinds of thoughts a person can have, and that [[Great Ape language|other great apes can learn languages]]. Pinker sees language as unique to humans, evolved to solve the specific problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He argues that it is as much an instinct as specialized adaptative behavior in other species, such as a spider's web-weaving or a beaver's dam-building.

Pinker states in his introduction that his ideas are "deeply influenced"<ref name="LIintro" /> by Chomsky; he also lists scientists whom Chomsky influenced to "open up whole new areas of language study, from child development and speech perception to neurology and genetics"<ref name="LIintro" /> – [[Eric Lenneberg]], [[George Armitage Miller|George Miller]], [[Roger William Brown|Roger Brown]], [[Morris Halle]] and [[Alvin Liberman]].<ref name="LIintro">{{cite book | title=The Language Instinct | publisher=Penguin | author=Pinker, Steven | year=1994 | pages=23–24}}</ref> Brown mentored Pinker through his thesis; Pinker stated that Brown's "funny and instructive"<ref name="BrownObit">{{cite journal | url=http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/Brown_obituary.pdf | title=Obituary: Roger Brown | author=Pinker, Steven | journal=Cognition | year=1998 | pages=199–213 (see page 205) | doi=10.1016/s0010-0277(98)00027-4 | volume=66 | issue=3 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150518180224/http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/Brown_obituary.pdf | archive-date=May 18, 2015 | pmid=9689769 | s2cid=6858457}}</ref> book ''Words and Things'' (1958) was one of the inspirations for ''The Language Instinct''.<ref name="BrownObit" /><ref name="uNNJp">{{cite journal | url=http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/brown-roger-w.pdf | title=Roger William Brown 1925–1997 | author=Kagan, Jerome | journal=Biographical Memoirs | year=1999 | volume=77 | pages=7 | access-date=May 17, 2014 | archive-date=May 18, 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150518093955/http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/brown-roger-w.pdf | url-status=live }}</ref>

There has been debate about the explanatory adequacy of the theory. By 2015, the linguistic [[Linguistic nativism|nativist]] views of Pinker and Chomsky had a number of challenges on the grounds that they had incorrect core assumptions and were inconsistent with research evidence from [[psycholinguistics]] and [[child language acquisition]].<ref name="rejection">* {{cite book | last1=Fernald | first1=Anne | title=Handbook of Psycholinguistics | last2=Marchman | first2=Virginia A. | date=2006| publisher=Academic Press | isbn=9780080466415 | editor-last=Traxler and Gernsbacher | pages=1027–1071 | chapter=27: Language learning in infancy}}, quote p. 1030: "Some critiques directly challenge the logic of arguments made by Chomsky, Pinker, and like-minded theorists, questioning such core assumptions as the universality of generative grammar, the autonomy of syntax in language processing, and the fundamental unlearnability of language (e.g., Bates & Goodman, 1999; Braine, 1994; Pullum & Scholz, 2002; Tomasello, 1995). Other critiques focus on empirical evidence inconsistent with particular nativist assertions. For example, the claim that negative evidence is not available when children make grammatical errors, an assumption central to the "poverty of the stimulus" argument at the heart of Chomsky’s theory, is not supported by a recent analysis of parents’ reformulations in speech to children (Chouinard & Clark, 2003). These diverse challenges, both philosophical and data-driven, have fueled debate over four decades about the explanatory adequacy of nativist theories of language learning." * {{cite book | last=de Bot | first=Kees | year=2015 | title=A History of Applied Linguistics: From 1980 to the Present | publisher=Routledge | isbn= 9781138820654}}, quote pp. 58–60: "GG is generally seen as a declining paradigm and its proponents now tend to stay away from conferences like AAAL (the American Association of Applied Linguistics) and University of Boston Child Language Development conferences, as a cursory count of papers on the basis of abstracts shows [...] In the psycholinguistic community, the idea of innateness and a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) were seen as problematic [...] Now that generation of GG linguists is retiring and there is a tendency in many universities not to replace them with younger scholars of that school, but rather appoint UB oriented linguists. There is almost a euphoria that the grip of the nativists on what constitutes linguistics is gone and that other approaches and more social orientations are seen as meaningful alternatives. Others try to explain the reasons for the decline of GG [...] Some informants are quite outspoken about the role of GG in AL. William Grabe states: "Fundamentally Chomsky is wrong and we wasted a lot of time. In 1964 Chomsky’s Aspects was published. Now, in 2014, we are 50 years later. What impact has all of that had in real world language use? This is an overstated theoretical direction." Jan Hulstijn summarizes: "Generative linguistics has had no noticeable (or durable) impact.""</ref> The reality of Pinker's proposed language instinct, and the related claim that grammar is innate and genetically based, has been contested by linguists such as [[Geoffrey Sampson]] in his 1997 book, ''[[Educating Eve|Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate]]''.<ref name="jcIP5">{{cite book|url=http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/1449/|title=The 'Language Instinct' Debate|year=2005|publisher=University of Sussex|isbn=9780826473851|access-date=June 8, 2014|archive-date=July 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714150640/http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/1449/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Sampson">{{cite web | url=http://www.grsampson.net/REmpNat.html | title=Empiricism v. Nativism: Nature or Nurture? | publisher=GRSampson.net | access-date=June 8, 2014 | archive-date=August 24, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130824045728/http://www.grsampson.net/REmpNat.html | url-status=live }}. More at [http://www.grsampson.net/BLID.html The 'Language Instinct' Debate] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181008182932/https://www.grsampson.net/BLID.html |date=October 8, 2018 }}</ref> Sampson argues that "while it may seem attractive to argue the nature side of the 'nature versus nurture' debate, the nurture side may better support the creativity and nobility of the human mind." Sampson denies there is a language instinct, and argues that children can learn language because people can learn anything.<ref name="Sampson" /> Others have sought a middle ground between Pinker's nativism and Sampson's culturalism.<ref name="Cowley">{{cite journal | last1 = Cowley | first1 = S. J. | year = 2001 | title = The baby, the bathwater and the 'language instinct' debate | journal = Language Sciences | volume = 23 | issue = 1| pages = 69–91 | doi = 10.1016/s0388-0001(00)00017-6}}</ref>

The assumptions underlying the [[Psychological nativism|nativist]] view have also been questioned in [[Jeffrey Elman]]'s ''[[Rethinking Innateness]]: A Connectionist Perspective on Development'', which defends the connectionist approach that Pinker attacked. In his 1996 book ''Impossible Minds'', the [[machine intelligence]] researcher [[Igor Aleksander]] calls ''The Language Instinct'' excellent, and argues that Pinker presents a relatively soft claim for innatism, accompanied by a strong dislike of the 'Standard Social Sciences Model' or SSSM (Pinker's term), which supposes that development is purely dependent on culture. Further, Aleksander writes that while Pinker criticises some attempts to explain language processing with neural nets, Pinker later makes use of a neural net to create past tense verb forms correctly. Aleksander concludes that while he doesn't support the SSSM, "a cultural repository of language just seems the easy trick for an efficient evolutionary system armed with an iconic [[state machine]] to play."<ref name="Aleksander">{{cite book | title=Impossible Minds | author=Aleksander, Igor | year=1996 | pages=228–234 | publisher=Imperial College Press | isbn=1-86094-030-7}}</ref>
[[File:Steven Pinker giving a lecture for Humanists UK.jpg|left|thumb|Pinker lecturing to humanists in the United Kingdom (2018)]]
Two other books, ''[[How the Mind Works]]'' (1997) and ''[[The Blank Slate]]'' (2002), broadly surveyed the mind and defended the idea of a complex human nature with many mental faculties that are genetically adaptive (Pinker is an ally of [[Daniel Dennett]] and [[Richard Dawkins]] in many disputes surrounding [[adaptationism]]). Another major theme in Pinker's theories is that human cognition works, in part, by combinatorial symbol-manipulation, not just associations among sensory features, as in many connectionist models. On the debate around ''The Blank Slate'', Pinker called [[Thomas Sowell]]'s book ''[[A Conflict of Visions]]'' "wonderful",<ref name="Sailer">{{cite web | url=http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/tbs/media_articles/2002_10_30_upi.html | title=Q&A: Steven Pinker of 'Blank Slate' | agency=United Press International | date=October 30, 2002 | access-date=May 10, 2014 | author=Sailer, Steve | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150316221651/http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/tbs/media_articles/2002_10_30_upi.html |archive-date=March 16, 2015}}</ref> and explained that "The Tragic Vision" and the "Utopian Vision" are the views of human nature behind [[right-wing|right-]] and left-wing ideologies.<ref name="Sailer" />

In ''[[Words and Rules|Words and Rules: the Ingredients of Language]]'' (1999), Pinker argues from his own research that regular and irregular phenomena are products of computation and memory lookup, respectively, and that language can be understood as an interaction between the two.<ref name="jjaWI">{{cite web|url=http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/wr/index.html |title=Words and Rules (book) |publisher=Harvard University |access-date=May 24, 2014 |author=Pinker, Steven |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140330020838/http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/wr/index.html |archive-date=March 30, 2014}}</ref> "Words and Rules" is also the title of an essay by Pinker outlining many of the topics discussed in the book.<ref name="WRessay" /> Critiqueing the book from the perspective of [[generative linguistics]] [[Charles Yang (linguist)|Charles Yang]], in the ''[[London Review of Books]]'', writes that "this book never runs low on hubris or hyperbole".<ref name="LRB">{{cite journal | url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n16/charles-yang/dig-dug-think-thunk | title=Dig-dug, think-thunk (review of ''Words and Rules'' by Steven Pinker) | author=Yang, Charles | journal=London Review of Books | date=August 24, 2000 | volume=22 | issue=6 | page=33 | access-date=June 1, 2014 | archive-date=June 2, 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140602201025/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n16/charles-yang/dig-dug-think-thunk | url-status=live }}</ref> The book's topic, the English past tense, is in Yang's view unglamorous, and Pinker's attempts at compromise risk being in no man's land between rival theories. Giving the example of German, Yang argues that irregular nouns in that language at least all belong to classes, governed by rules, and that things get even worse in languages that attach prefixes and suffixes to make up long 'words': they can't be learnt individually, as there are untold numbers of combinations. "All Pinker (and the connectionists) are doing is turning over the rocks at the base of the intellectual landslide caused by the Chomskian revolution."<ref name="LRB" />

In ''[[The Stuff of Thought]]'' (2007), Pinker looks at a wide range of issues around the way words related to thoughts on the one hand, and to the world outside ourselves on the other. Given his evolutionary perspective, a central question is how an intelligent mind capable of abstract thought evolved: how a mind adapted to [[Stone Age]] life could work in the modern world. Many quirks of language are the result.<ref name="5kW5k">{{cite web | url=http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/stuff/index.html | title=The Stuff of Thought | publisher=Harvard University | access-date=May 30, 2014 | author=Pinker, Steven | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509163145/http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/stuff/index.html | archive-date=May 9, 2008}}</ref>

Pinker is critical of theories about the [[Evolution of language|evolutionary origins of language]] that argue that linguistic cognition might have evolved from earlier musical cognition. He sees language as being tied primarily to the capacity for logical reasoning, and speculates that human proclivity for music may be a [[Spandrel (biology)|spandrel]] – a feature not adaptive in its own right, but that has persisted through other traits that are more broadly practical, and thus selected for. In ''How the Mind Works'', Pinker reiterates [[Immanuel Kant]]'s view that music is not in itself an important cognitive phenomenon, but that it happens to stimulate important auditory and spatio-motor cognitive functions. Pinker compares music to "auditory cheesecake", stating that "As far as biological cause and effect is concerned, music is useless".{{citation needed |date=August 2024 |reason=If we're going to quote somebody, we should provide a citation to verify the accuracy of the quote.}} This argument has been rejected by [[Daniel Levitin]] and [[Joseph Carroll (scholar)|Joseph Carroll]], experts in [[music cognition]], who argue that music has had an important role in the evolution of human cognition.<ref name="nhl5X">{{cite journal | last1 = Levitin | first1 = D. J. | last2 = Tirovolas | first2 = A. K. | year = 2009 | title = Current Advances in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Music | journal = Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | volume = 1156 | issue = 1 | pages = 211–231 | doi = 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04417.x | pmid = 19338510 | bibcode = 2009NYASA1156..211L | s2cid = 2856561 | url = http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=145070 | access-date = August 16, 2019 | archive-date = June 30, 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230630210714/https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/articles/hq37vs36p?locale=en | url-status = live }}</ref><ref name="Tqxkv">{{cite journal | last1 = Perlovsky | first1 = L | year = 2011 | title = Music. Cognitive Function, Origin, And Evolution Of Musical Emotions | journal = WebmedCentral Psychology  | volume = 2 | issue = 2| page = WMC001494}}</ref><ref name="YAPpr">{{cite journal | last1 = Abbott | first1 = Alison | year = 2002 | title = Neurobiology: Music, maestro, please! | journal = Nature | volume = 416 | issue = 6876 | pages = 12–14 | doi = 10.1038/416012a | pmid = 11882864 | bibcode = 2002Natur.416...12A | s2cid = 4420891| doi-access = free }}</ref><ref name="xjo3b">Cross, I. (1999). Is music the most important thing we ever did? Music, development and evolution. [preprint (html)] [preprint (pdf)] In Suk Won Yi (Ed.), Music, mind and science (pp&nbsp;10–39), Seoul: Seoul National University Press.</ref><ref name="Interview with Daniel Levitin">{{cite web | url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/blog/interview-with-daniel-levitin/part-two/27/ | title=Interview with Daniel Levitin | publisher=Pbs.org | date=May 20, 2009 | access-date=December 29, 2012 | archive-date=October 18, 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018095915/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/blog/interview-with-daniel-levitin/part-two/27/ | url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Steven Pinker's Cheesecake For The Mind">{{cite web | url=http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Carroll_C98.html | title=Steven Pinker's Cheesecake For The Mind | publisher=Cogweb.ucla.edu | year=1998 | access-date=December 29, 2012 | author=Carroll, Joseph | archive-date=January 29, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130129122654/http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Carroll_C98.html | url-status=live }}</ref> In his book ''[[This Is Your Brain On Music]]'', Levitin argues that music could provide adaptive advantage through [[sexual selection]], social bonding, and [[cognitive development]]; he questions the assumption that music is the antecedent to language, as opposed to its progenitor, noting that many species display music-like habits that could be seen as precursors to human music.<ref name="lfmjT">Levitin, Daniel. 2006. ''[[This Is Your Brain On Music|This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession]]'', New York: Dutton/Penguin.</ref>

Pinker has also been critical of "[[whole language]]" reading instruction techniques, stating in ''[[How the Mind Works]]'', "...{{nbsp}}the dominant technique, called 'whole language,' the insight that [spoken] language is a naturally developing human instinct has been garbled into the evolutionarily improbable claim that ''reading'' is a naturally developing human instinct."<ref name="HnL6i">{{Citation|last1=Pinker|first1=Steven|title=How the Mind Works|publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]]|place=New York|pages=342|year=1997|title-link=How the Mind Works}}</ref> In the appendix to the 2007 reprinted edition of ''[[The Language Instinct]]'', Pinker cited ''Why Our Children Can't Read'' by cognitive psychologist [[Diane McGuinness]] as his favorite book on the subject and noted:

<blockquote>One raging public debate involving language went unmentioned in ''[[The Language Instinct]]'': the "reading wars," or dispute over whether children should be explicitly taught to read by decoding the sounds of words from their spelling (loosely known as "phonics") or whether they can develop it instinctively by being immersed in a text-rich environment (often called "whole language"). I tipped my hand in the paragraph in [the sixth chapter of the book] which said that language is an instinct but reading is not.<ref name="KILwu">{{Citation|last1=Pinker|first1=Steven|title=The Language Instinct|publisher=[[Harper Perennial]]|place=New York|pages=186|edition=3rd|year=2007|title-link=The Language Instinct}}</ref> Like most psycholinguists (but apparently unlike many school boards), I think it's essential for children to be taught to become aware of speech sounds and how they are coded in strings of letters.<ref name="DN9iV">{{Citation|last1=Pinker|first1=Steven|title=The Language Instinct|publisher=[[Harper Perennial]]|place=New York|pages=PS14|edition=3rd|year=2007|title-link=The Language Instinct}}</ref>
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