Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil Audiobook (Free)

A respected cognitive scientist argues a deep sense of great and bad is bred in the bone tissue.

From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Most of us neglect that babies are given birth to selfish and that it’s the function of society-and especially parents-to transform them from small sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that human beings are actually hardwired with a sense of about Simply Infants: The Roots of Good and Bad morality. Sketching on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, also before they are able to speak or walk, infants judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; experience empathy and compassion; work to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice.

Still, this innate morality is limited, occasionally tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from mindset, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and beliefs, Bloom explores how we attended to surpass these restrictions. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral emotions about sex, politics, religious beliefs, and race.

In his analysis from 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 like reason has driven our great medical discoveries, he argues, it is cause and deliberation which makes possible our moral discoveries, like the wrongness of slavery. Ultimately, it is through our creativity, our compassion, and our exclusively human convenience of rational thought that people can transcend the primitive feeling of morality we were born with, getting more than just babies.

Paul Bloom has a gift for bringing abstract suggestions to lifestyle, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Simply Babies presents a radical brand-new perspective on our moral lives.