Quotessence
Home / Authors / Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom

Paul Bloom Quotes

Professor

Filter quotes by topic

AllEmpathyPeopleThinkingIfsCareMoralCompassionWorldArgumentFeels

Famous Paul Bloom Quotes

“Some very common foods and drinks are aversive. Few people enjoy, at first, coffee, beer, tobacco, or chili pepper. Pleasure from pain is uniquely human. No other animal willingly eats such foods when there are alternatives. 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 animal that likes Tabasco sauce.”

PleasureFoodHuman
Book:How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Create image

“It might feel, at least to some of us, that our opinions about issues such as abortion and the death penalty are the products of careful deliberation and that our specific moral acts, such as deciding to give to charity or visit a friend in the hospital—or for that matter, deciding to shoplift or shout a racist insult out of a car window—are grounded in conscious decision-making. But this is said to be mistaken. As Jonathan Haidt argues, we are not judges; we are lawyers, making up explanations after the deeds have been done. Reason is impotent. "We celebrate rationality," agrees de Waal, "but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight.”

ThinkingEmpathyDecision MakingMorality Without ReligionCognitive Process
Book:Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
Create image

“It is fascinating to discover that individuals who are asked to assign a punishment to a criminal are influenced by factors that they are unaware of (like the presence of a flag in the room) or that they would consciously diavow (like the color of the criminal's skin). It is boring to find that individuals' proposed punishments are influenced by rational considerations such as the severity of the crime and the criminal's previous record. Interesting: we are more willing to help someonw if there is the smell of fresh bread in the air. Boring: we are more willing to help someone if he or she has been kind to us in the past. We sometimes forget that this bias in publication exists and take what is reported in scientific journals and the popular press as an accurate reflection of our best science of how the mind works. But this is like watching the nightly news and concluding that rape, robbery, and murder are part of any individual's everyday life - forgetting that the nightly news doesn't report the vast majority of cases where nothing of this sort happens at all.”

PsychologyPublication Bias
Book:Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
Create image

“I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldWayCareCommunityStrangerAcknowledgeGoing AwayGood WayAmerican Life
Author:Paul Bloom
Create image

“I think there's some evidence that when it comes to being a doctor or nurse, a police officer or therapist, that empathetic engagement leads to burn-out. Imagine if you're dealing with severely ill children, and you felt their pain all the time, and the pain of their parents - you wouldn't be able to do that job for very long. It would kill you.”

IfsThinkingChildrenLongAblePainJobsFeltParentImagineEvidenceDoctorsPoliceIllOfficersEngagementNurseTherapistsPolice OfficerBurn OutEmpathetic
Author:Paul Bloom
Create image

“For the most part, people use "empathy" to mean everything good. For instance, many medical schools have courses in empathy. But if you look at what they mean, they just want medical students to be nicer to their patients, to listen to them, to respect them, to understand them. What's not to like? If they were really teaching empathy, then I'd say there is a world of problems there.”

PeopleIfsWorldWantLooksMeanUseProblemSchoolCoursesTeachingStudentsEmpathyPatientMedicalInstanceWant MeMedical School
Author:Paul Bloom
Create image