*Physical bodies, immaterial souls*


What makes us human?

Paul Bloom's book of _Descartes' Baby_ offers a rich and satisfying exploration of this existential question. At the core of this book is the premise that "we are dualists who have two ways of looking at the world: in terms of bodies and in terms of souls." (p.191). In other words, we see our bodies and souls as separate entities and "we do not feel as if we *are* bodies; we feel as if we *occupy* them." (p. 191)

This dualistic lens allows u More...

Paul Bloom is a respected developmental psychologist who describes recent findings that suggest that babies are natural born dualists. He borrows from the evolutionary psychology approach to show how this innate dualism eventuates into the human concerns with art, spirituality and the moral sense. This is an easy to read book, not a professional tome.

Fascinating, informative and most importantly, highly readable. It trots along with just enough content and pace. I kept thinking he would run out of ideas or start to be less interesting, but no, consistently excellent all the way through. An inspiration of a book.

Each chapter examines an area or issue of child development, creating a mosaic of characteristis that contribute of our humanity. It is well-written, the author is appealing, and the research is very interesting, though the book is more episodic than comprehensive.

I expected more of this book. In particular, I would have liked to read about a larger number of different experiments with babies and children, supporting the view that we are natural-born Cartesian dualists. Besides, the main idea of the book seems to owe more to the psychologist Henry Wellman than Bloom actually gives him credit.

"The senselessly cruel mother here is Mother Nature."

Consider the different ways in which one can die:

Aged
Bleeding
Executed
Found dead in the streets
Grief
Killed by several accidents
Lethargy
Mother
Plague
Poisoned
Suddenly
Vomiting
Wolf

"The art world was our conceptual oyster, and we ate it raw."

(It must be hard to be a psychopath—so much effort, all the time.)

St. Augustine was greatly influenced by Cicero's vivid image of Etruscan pirates' torture of prisoners by strapping a corpse to them face to face. More...

for content, it gets a 5+, but the style is a bit rough.

Solid. Nothing particularly new, but a really nicely-written overview of key biological, psychological and moral issues that sums up what it means to be human.

This book discusses recent studies of brain development and early childhood, and makes the case that the way we perceive and understand the world explains human philosophy and art from an evolutionary perspective.

It's an intriguing thesis, and every section of the book had some interesting facts. Overall quite readable. But in the end I was left feeling that the book didn't quite pull together all of the threads and some sections really didn't seem relevant to the main point.

The author of this book contends that people are natural-born dualists, and even babies see the world in terms of bodies and souls. I thought that this book had the potential to be very interesting, but instead I found it to be slow-moving and disjointed. It definitely did not contain as much information and theory about child development as I would have hoped, based on the title. By far the best chapter was the one on disgust, which was quite amusing.

This was a very interesting read, and gave me quite a few new things to think about. I don't agree with a lot of the things that the author takes as givens in his arguments, but found his logic and thought processes quite fascinating. Overall, I really enjoyed this read.

Fascinating, informative and most importantly, highly readable. It trots along with just enough content and pace. I kept thinking he would run out of ideas or start to be less interesting, but no, consistently excellent all the way through. An inspiration of a book.

I disagree with Bloom's conclusion, but I really enjoyed learning about child development and even babies are perfect little proto-people, but their own species as well.

Great book! Especially for those interested in developmental psychology

Great book for expectant dads who want to study their child.

Humans, even small children, are as adapted to dealing with other people - understanding their intentions, judging their feelings and beliefs - as they are to dealing with inanimate things. The exception are autistic people, such as the author's brother, who consider people to be things; the author once worked in a camp for autistic children, and a boy climbed him to get a toy from a shelf as if he were furniture. The fact that autistic people have one ability working fine and the other complete More...