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Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
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About Just Babies: The Origins Of Good And Evil
Product Description A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice.Still, this innate morality is limited, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Bloom explores how we have come to surpass these limitations. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral feelings about sex, politics, religion, and race. In his analysis of the morality of children and adults, Bloom rejects the fashionable view that our moral decisions are driven mainly by gut feelings and unconscious biases. Just as reason has driven our great scientific discoveries, he argues, it is reason and deliberation that makes possible our moral discoveries, such as the wrongness of slavery. Ultimately, it is through our imagination, our compassion, and our uniquely human capacity for rational thought that we can transcend the primitive sense of morality we were born with, becoming more than just babies.Paul Bloom has a gift for bringing abstract ideas to life, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Just Babies offers a radical new perspective on our moral lives. Review A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice"Insightful [and] frequently funny…Bloom manages to translate abstract principles into clear, readable prose, making complex material accessible to the layperson without oversimplifying. His voice is witty, engaging, and candidly quirky…Reveals striking truths about the nature of morality and humanity." --Boston Globe"Fascinating."--The Atlantic"Bloom has a talent for distilling scholarly work (his and others’) into accessible, appealing prose...He writes with both an authority and an openness that suggest he would enjoy a lively discussion with any skeptics."--Washington Post"Bloom — an elegant, lucid and economical writer — makes an excellent guide...He’s an observer and evaluator who’s not ideologically invested in any one interpretation of the evidence… If he takes exception with moral philosophy’s fixation on depersonalized thought problems, he is just as leery of the notion that morality is entirely based on feelings derived from our evolutionary past. The hard-wired stuff is just the beginning, Bloom points out, and reason has an essential part to play in our moral development, as well."--Laura Miller, Salon"In a lively, accessible style, Bloom…draws on research into adults from many societies, including the extant hunter-gatherer tribes. And he tackles the moral claims of philosophy and religion, arguing that we understand how the 'amoral force of natural selection' may have instilled the foundations for moral thought and action."--New Scientist"Brisk and authoritative...[Bloom’s] discussion of disgust is particularly good…the experiments he describes are nifty."--Nature"One comes to Paul Bloom for his unfailingly brilliant psychological research; one stays for the wise and relaxed way he writes about it."--Jim Holt, author of Why Does the World Exist?: An Existenti
