Paul Bloom
Author of Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
About the Author
Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University and the author or editor of six books, including the acclaimed How Pleasure Works. He lives in New Haven with his wife and two sons.
Works by Paul Bloom
Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (2004) 191 copies, 3 reviews
How Children Learn the Meanings of Words (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change) (2000) 80 copies
Psychological Science Under Scrutiny: Recent Challenges and Proposed Solutions (2017) — Contributor — 7 copies
Is God an Accident? 1 copy
How Pleasure Works 1 copy
Associated Works
What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable (1914) — Contributor — 644 copies, 8 reviews
The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-first Century (2002) — Contributor — 390 copies, 9 reviews
The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (2009) — Contributor — 41 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1963-12-24
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- Canada
- Birthplace
- Montréal, Québec, Canada
- Places of residence
- Montréal, Québec, Canada
Massachusetts, USA
Arizona, USA - Education
- McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Occupations
- Professor of Psychology
author - Relationships
- Wynn, Karen (wife)
- Organizations
- Yale University
University of Arizona - Short biography
- PAUL BLOOM is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field.
Dr. Bloom has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author or editor of six books, including Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil.
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~pb85/Paul_B...
Members
Reviews
Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil by Paul Bloom
Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil by Paul Bloom was recommended reading for a class on morality that I took a few months ago. The idea of studying babies to see how they react to determine just how much of morality is hardwired in us fascinated me. I read the book with intense interest, particularly the studies. I couldn't help but wonder if the researchers were reading into the babies' reactions to get the results they wanted, at least at times. Bloom writes an interesting and engaging book, but the skeptic in me kept showing up when he described how the studies were conducted. Just Babies is a fascinating read that feels like a starting point and left me with questions rather than answers, but maybe that was the point. Bloom explores many aspects of morality, moral philosophy, and moral psychology in conjunction with the studies conducted on babies. Just Babies struck me as more a book about whether or not babies differentiate between harmfulness and kindness than about the origins of good and evil.… (more)
I found this book to be an interesting and (from my totally non-professional opinion, so I could be wrong) seemingly exhaustive introduction to psychology. I appreciated the nuanced takes on different aspects of the study of the human mind. I have no background whatsoever in this topic, and appreciated learning more about the topic.
After all the "well these people think this, and others think that" nuance in the first several chapters of the book, I was very unhappy to read the "women are more empathetic and men are more aggressive" bullsh*t parroted later in the book, totally ignoring that women are socialized to be more empathetic, so how can we generalize and say that personality has to do with innate qualities of individuals?
I also appreciated the chapter on mental illness but didn't like that the author did not even opt to mention that there is NO biological basis for any mental illness. He gives just enough of a glimpse of "look, this is complicated, and many sides to this" but I found it interesting in the pieces of the puzzle that the author opted not to include in his book at all.… (more)
After all the "well these people think this, and others think that" nuance in the first several chapters of the book, I was very unhappy to read the "women are more empathetic and men are more aggressive" bullsh*t parroted later in the book, totally ignoring that women are socialized to be more empathetic, so how can we generalize and say that personality has to do with innate qualities of individuals?
I also appreciated the chapter on mental illness but didn't like that the author did not even opt to mention that there is NO biological basis for any mental illness. He gives just enough of a glimpse of "look, this is complicated, and many sides to this" but I found it interesting in the pieces of the puzzle that the author opted not to include in his book at all.… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 27
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 1,834
- Popularity
- #14,035
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 50
- ISBNs
- 117
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 2
