Paul Bloom Quotes

39 quotes in 804 categories

• A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But…
• Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.
• Families survive the terrible twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons.
• Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives…
• And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data.
• If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks…
• We don't just respond to things as we see them, or feel them, or hear them. Rather, our response is conditioned on our beliefs, about…
• We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods.…
• Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only…
• On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an…
• Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future.
• We know that young babies, as they become capable of moving voluntarily, will share. They will share food, for instance, with their siblings and with…
• I think what a lot of fiction is, is the imagining of the worst so as to prepare ourselves.
• A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
• Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains…
• More-radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains…
• Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people, adopting their perspectives so…
• It is clear that rituals and sacrifices can bring people together, and it may well be that a group that does such things has an…
• We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder - some would say…
• 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…

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