Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom
Paul Bloomis a Canadian American professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on language, morality, religion, fiction, and art...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth24 December 1963
CountryCanada
babies beings notions seen taught
Morality is often seen as an innovation, like agriculture and writing. From this perspective, babies are pint-sized psychopaths, self-interested beings who need to be taught moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person.
degrade enhance innate
We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.
imagination substitute useful work
Imagination is Reality Lite - a useful substitute when the real pleasure is inaccessible, too risky, or too much work.
imagining
I think what a lot of fiction is, is the imagining of the worst so as to prepare ourselves.
humans
Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.
claim flat good religion
Any simple claim that you need religion to be good is flat wrong.
body evidence growing humans life
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
bodies bones harder turning
We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder - some would say impossible - to imagine the end of our very existence.
advantage amazing human kids pilot proven source subject tremendous
Having kids has proven to be this amazing - for me, this amazing source of ideas of anecdotes, of examples, I can test my own kids without human subject permission, so they pilot - I pilot my ideas on them. And so it is a tremendous advantage to have kids if you're going to be a developmental psychologist.
debate hardly obamacare red root sides surprising
Most of us know nothing about constitutional law, so it's hardly surprising that we take sides in the Obamacare debate the way we root for the Red Sox or the Yankees. Loyalty to the team is what matters.
grasp intuitive quantum selection
The real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us.
experience freshness inhabited looking might morality objects perhaps surprise
Perhaps looking out through big baby eyes - if we could - would not be as revelatory experience as many imagine. We might see a world inhabited by objects and people, a world infused with causation, agency, and morality - a world that would surprise us not by its freshness but by its familiarity.
attractive babies based face features geometry human judging legal might moral nature prefer relying
Relying on the face might be human nature - even babies prefer to look at attractive people. But, of course, judging someone based on the geometry of his features is, from a moral and legal standpoint, no better than judging him based on the color of his skin.
moral judgment good-things
I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.