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
gay people abortion
The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight.
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I'm really interested in the pleasure we get from stories and the pleasure we get from movies, and certainly the pleasure we get from virtual experiences. My complaint is against empathy as a moral guide. But as a source of pleasure, it can't be beat.
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I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.
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Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.
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I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.
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I have two teenage sons, and they're both surviving, thriving, and having a great time, and they're always on social media.
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It would be nice if everybody who had something interesting to say about my work could say it politely and civilly, but it doesn't work that way... Sometimes people are just really nasty.
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I kind of like social media, and I like hearing from people. I don't like the ugly stuff, but there are some people - smart people - who have a very different perspective, and I'll get a backlash from them. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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Some of the natural world is appealing, some of it is terrifying, and some of it grosses us out. Modern people don't want to be dropped naked into a swamp. We want to tour Yosemite with our water bottles and G.P.S. devices. The natural world is a source of happiness and fulfillment, but only when prescribed in the right doses.
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Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future.
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If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones.
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Natural selection shaped the human brain to be drawn toward aspects of nature that enhance our survival and reproduction, like verdant landscapes and docile creatures. There is no payoff to getting the warm fuzzies in the presence of rats, snakes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, herpes simplex and the rabies virus.
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Periods of cooperation between political parties shouldn't be taken for granted; they are a stunning human achievement.
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If our moral attitudes are entirely the result of nonrational factors, such as gut feelings and the absorption of cultural norms, they should either be stable or randomly drift over time, like skirt lengths or the widths of ties. They shouldn't show systematic change over human history. But they do.