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  • Just Babies

  • The Origins of Good and Evil
  • By: Paul Bloom
  • Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
  • Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (69 ratings)

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Just Babies

By: Paul Bloom
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
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Summary

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.

©2013 Paul Bloom; 2013 Random House Audio
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Critic reviews

"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 Existential Detective Story)

"The rich cognitive and moral life of babies is among the most fascinating discoveries of twenty-first-century psychology. Paul Bloom explains how this work illuminates human nature, and does it with his trademark clarity, depth, discernment, and graceful style." (Steven Pinker, professor of psychology, Harvard University; author of How the Mind Works)

"Take a tour through the latest and most amazing research in child psychology, and come back with a better understanding of the strange things adults do. Bloom shows us how a first rate scientist integrates conflicting findings, broad scholarship, and deep humanity to draw a nuanced and often surprising portrait of human nature, with all its beauty, horror, and wonder." (Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, New York University Stern School of Business; author of The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind)

What listeners say about Just Babies

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For school

I really enjoyed this read. I always imagine my course books to be quite boring, but this was very thought provoking and interesting. I would definitely recommend this book to others, who have grumbled about why/how we act the way we act as human beings.

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Morality and it's origins.

The subject of morality and it's origins. Adds to the work of Stephen Pinker and Sam Harris, both of whom are authors I highly recommend, and this book deserves high praise for managing to expand on their already extensive coverage of the topic in new and interesting ways. (See "The Moral Landscape" and "Lying" by Sam Harris and "The better Angels Of Our Nature" by Stephen Pinker).

Unfortunately, Like other authors (Chris Stringer) he refers to the concept of group selection in a way that suggests he doesn't understand the group selection hypothesis (And why it's false), and therefore needs to read or re-read Dawkins "Selfish Gene". But this is an incredibly small nitpick of an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone, but is probably even more interesting to parents and teachers, or anyone who works with children.

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It's good

Good for anyone new to moral concepts. Maybe not so much new to someone who studied Philosophy or Psychology.

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