Almost nobody believes anymore that infants are insensate blobs. It seems both mad and evil to deny experience and feeling to a laughing, gurgling creature.
Paul BloomRead
I want to convince you that humans are, to some extent, natural born essentialists. What I mean by this is 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 what they really are, what they came from, what they're made of, what their hidden nature is.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans interpret their experiences based on underlying beliefs about the nature of things.
In this quote, Paul Bloom suggests that human perception is not merely a reflexive response to stimuli; rather, it is deeply influenced by our underlying beliefs and concepts about the essence of the world around us. This essentialist perspective implies that our understanding and interactions with our environment are shaped by our assumptions regarding the true nature of things, which affects how we perceive and engage with them.
Themes
BeliefsPerceptionEssentialismNatureUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophy lecture discussing the nature of human perception.
More from Paul Bloom
All quotes →Maybe one of the most heartening findings from the psychology of pleasure is there's more to looking good than your physical appearance. 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 much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
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If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones.
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We benefit, intellectually and personally, from the interplay between different selves, from the balance between long-term contemplation and short-term impulse. We should be wary about tipping the scales too far. The community of selves shouldn't be a democracy, but it shouldn't be a dictatorship, either.
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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 as to share their experiences. This allows us to enjoy fictional events that would shock and sadden us in real life.
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A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves.
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