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Steven Pinker – The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature



The RSA

For Steven Pinker, the brilliance of the mind lies in the way it uses just two processes to turn the finite building blocks of our language into infinite meanings. The first is metaphor: we take a concrete idea and use it as a stand-in for abstract thoughts. The second is combination: we combine ideas according to rules, like the syntactic rules of language, to create new thoughts out of old ones.

Note – This video contains strong language.

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35 thoughts on “Steven Pinker – The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature
  1. Pinker, the only language you know is English! It is amazing that growing up in Quebec you never even learned French. Your monolingual bias blinds you just as your master – Chomsky is limited by his monolingualism.

  2. would the Non-sense a responsible,under specific circumstances,of producing the tow processes,or one of them at least? so why bothered fulfilling such knowledge? this is purposeless,I think,and leads nowhere but to the None-sense itself again.In addition,langues are totally completed,semantically. but thoughts aren't in order to get syntax rebuild every time a group of people need to be orgasmed for instance.

  3. Mr. Steven Pinker, I just want to say that I think you explained perfectly, not well, perfectly why swearwords are considered bad. I truly admire your details! Thank you very much for making everything perfectly clear!

  4. This was hilarious and enlightening simultaneously. I'm still a bit off put by a scientific approach to language; my man seems to be lacking some sociocultural angles in his analysis, but I suppose it is one of our best attempts at conceptualizing language. Love it!

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