Customer Reviews

Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Engaging and funny cognitive scientist Paul Bloom's second book is a fascinating read. In it, he argues that we are wired to view the world as containing both bodies and souls. Bloom argues convincingly that it is for this reason, that even when the idea of psychophysical dualism clashes with our intellectual understanding of bodies and souls, we still maintain vestiges of a belief in the immaterial soul. His discussions of a huge range of fascinating issues make this book a must-read.

Descartes' Baby is incredibly fun to read, and is smattered with bits of humor and amusing anecdotes about real children and adults. Indeed, one of the most humorous moments in this lively book is Bloom's account of a neuroscientist colleague's culinarily-motivated search for animals without a certain neural structure, because, he reasoned, animals without this certain structure surely didn't have consciousness and therefore we safe to eat.

Another strength of the book is Bloom's treatment of disgust. His view is both interesting and nuanced and falls naturally from his argument that we are intuitive dualists at heart. Other high points are his discussion of art and forgery, and his quite funny discussion of humor.

It's not often that I read nonfiction. Normally I find it either too pedantic or too technical and narrow in scope to appeal to an outsider. One of the tremendous strengths of this book is that someone without training in developmental psychology or philosophy can follow it with ease, while still finding it intellectually satisfying.

This book is truly a gem -- both entertaining and important. It's a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about human nature.

This is an amazing book. It is written with great clarity, insight, and humor while at the same time preserving scientific and conceptual rigor-a very rare combination indeed. How often is one lucky enough to pick up a book covering complex issues in science and philosophy and find that it is so riveting that one stays up all night reading it?
Bloom addresses one of the deepest and most profound issues of what makes us human, our tendencies to see others as comprised of utterly distinct bodies and minds, that is the dualism of Descartes. While modern philosophers and cognitive scientists may largely reject dualism, the rest of us , and even those philosophers and scientists in their less reflective moments, embrace dualism so completely that it colors every aspect of our interpretations of others and of their activities.
Bloom's book brilliantly shows how this dualism is not some late emerging impression made by one's culture or society, instead it is a fundamental part of how our minds are built, and can be seen in rudimentary forms even in infancy. He explains how it emerges and why it makes sense that we should all be endowed with this assumption, even if it is in many ways severely misleading. He shows how our dualism explains an extraordinary range of otherwise puzzling phenomena in domains as diverse as disgust, art forgery, humor, religion and altruism. Bloom is a leading researcher on the development of children's minds who is also an award winning writer; and this book shows how these two skills can mutually reinforce each other in ways that create fascinating, enlightening, and engaging reading. Any one interested in children, in cognitive science, or simply in human nature, will find themselves adoring this book. This book is science writing at its very best.

In Descartes' Baby, Paul Bloom engagingly writes about research that shows babies are more sophisticated than we usually give them credit for. At a very early age, babies are aware of the constancy of objects, that appearances may be deceptive, and that other people may hold false beliefs. The problem is what Bloom makes of this.

Bloom thinks those experiments prove babies are Cartesian dualists because they distinguish objects from belief-holding humans. But dualism isn't simply the belief that there's a difference between people and objects. We were making that distinction before Descartes. Cartesian dualism conceives of the mental and the physical as so distinct and different that it doesn't seem the two could ever even interact. And that's not a distinction babies make. If "dualism" means that we distinguish conscious critters from inanimate things, then, yes, we're all dualists. But what have we learned except a new definition of "dualist"?

Baby dualism isn't even necessary dual. I can believe that you are different from a log because you are aware of and care about your world without thinking that you are made of two types of substance. I don't think Bloom has shown much more than that babies are aware that logs don't think and feel but people do.

This "insight" doesn't give Bloom much of a lever for understanding the Big Issues he deals with: Art, philosophy, religion, ethics... For example, he wonders how we can be moved by "anxious objects," i.e., art such as Warhol's Brillo boxes or conceptual art such as a dead horse hung from the ceiling. Most of the chapter goes through the predictable explanations of why we respond to art. At the end he acknowledges that he hasn't yet explained the appeal of "anxious" art. The big explanation: "...We enjoy displays of skill, of virtuosity, both physical and intellectual." But that's true of non-anxious art, and not true of all anxious art. Without acknowledging this, he moves on to say that we enjoy anxious art because we can see the human intention in it. But, again, that's true of all art, not just anxious art. His investigation does not come close to answering the question he raises. (Artworks are a good example of the impossibility of separating the physical and the intentional...evidence against dualism.)

Likewise, his explanation of why children tend to believe in Creationism (AKA Intelligent Design) - it is "a natural by-product of a mind evolved to think in terms of goals and intentions" - doesn't help. Animism also seems to be a "natural by-product." So what? How does this socio-biological explanation help? Likewise for his explanation of altruism, his discussion of essentialism - which waters the concept down the way the book waters down "dualism" - his consideration of the origin of religious beliefs, etc.

The book is exceptionally well written and engaging. The baby research is fascinating. But I think it fails as an attempt to make something big out of that research.

Paul Bloom explains how it is that humans come to feel embarrassment, disgust, or moral revulsion (among other things). He argues that these feeling can be traced to our earliest development, in which we learn about the properties of objects and other people. These parallel developments interact to result in special feelings towards certain objects such as great works of art or decaying meat. Although feelings of embarrassment and disgust may not be limited to humans, he argues that without even negative emotions and feelings, we would not be fully human.

The book is full of witty and fascinating anecdotes, as well as thought-provoking questions. The first chapters lay the groundwork by reviewing recent findings about the development of infants. The book steadily gains in interest as these findings form the groundwork for intriguing discussions of emotion, morality, and religion.

Although the author is apparently a professor at Yale, the book can be read by anyone who is interested in children or in how we end up the way we are. In fact, as I got further and further into it, I could not put it down.

In this rare combination of entertaining writing and serious scientific review, Bloom argues that human beings are natural-born dualists--meaning that from infancy we perceive the world as being made of "bodies" (material objects) and "souls" (things with intentions, desires, and other mental states). Using this explanatory scheme, Bloom is able to explain a variety of puzzling phenomena--from autism to art forgery. What makes Bloom's book a gem is that it performs a rare feat in modern psychology in that it actually explains social life rather than simply redescribing it using psychological jargon.

Whether you are an interested student of psychology, a serious academic, or a curious parent, this book will satisfy your curiousity about the current state of knowledge surrounding human development. (It goes without saying that this is also a must-read for any cognitive science junkie!)

With this book Bloom has elevated his status as a serious intellect who has maintained an ability to communicate to a wide audience--joining others like Pinker, Dennett, and Gould.

This is a Terrific book. It is written in a lively, accessible style, yet says some serious things about what it is to be human. The author's main point is that we have two very different ways of viewing and thinking about reality: in terms of the physical world of material bodies, and in terms of the social world of people. He suggests that these two viewpoints often collide in interesting and surprising ways, to unique effect, to explain such things about human nature as: Why slapstick humor is funny; why we consider some things (such as certain sex acts, for example) to be disgusting; the nature of human morality and why our 'moral circle' has expanded through history; the ubiquity of religious thought; and other things fundamental to being human. To support his explanations, he draws extensively on recent findings in developmental psychology, showing us that how children think and develop tells us a lot about human nature. This is a serious, intelligent book that makes some deep, genuinely creative new insights into the complex nature of human psychology.

If you're interested in human nature, child development, or cognitive science, you will find this book full of fascinating information and provocative ideas. Finally, it is just plain fun reading!

About 20 years ago, philosopher Daniel Dennett started talking about what he calls the "intentional stance." The intentional stance is the ability, prevelant in humans and animals to a lesser extent, to look at other beings as intentional agents with goals and desires. Dennett explained how th intentional stance could easily be viewed as an evolutionary adaptation - allowing those who can adapt it to predict others behaviors, understand language as a thing communicating inner states, etc.

In this book, Bloom is basically taking the same idea, showing the science that backs it up, and applying it to psychology. Babies, Bloom writes, seem born with the ability to see others as agents, differentiate between animate and inanimate objects, and feel empathy ("step into others' shoes").

Towards this end, Bloom cites innumerable studies done with babies, infants, and young children. Most of the studies on babies and infants measures whether the baby looks longer at certain images than others to see which are more interesting and (it is hoped) unusual. Fior instance, in order to see whether babies can 'grasp' the idea of objects' solidity, babies were shwon a picture, first, of a mug being pulled where the handle AND the base move in the same direction at the same speed and, second, a mug being pulled where the handle and the base travel in the same direction at different speeds. The babies tended to look longer at the second image, leading to the conclusion that they see the second as more 'curious' and unusual.

As other reviewers menktion, these experiments can be dicey and can lend themselves to a few different interpretations. Be that as it may, studies of children are more straightforward, as they consist of children being asked questions and to perform tasks. Needless to say, all the experiments with children support strongly the idea that children are quite good at the intentional stance. What seems to clinch it is the studies involving children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). ASD children, when tested, fail in every case whereby experimenters ask that the intentional stance be applied to other beings. From attempts to find out whether ASD kids feel empathy with those in pain to cases of whether ASD kids see God anthropomorphically, Bloom shows that ASD simply destroys the ability to 'read minds,' an activity non-ASD kids seem to do naturally.

I am taking one star off because some chapters seem so loosely related to the authors thesis that they seem to impair the book's effectiveness. The chapter on the evolutionary origins of disgust, for instance, is interesting but hardly applicable to exploration of kids ability to see other minds as other minds.

To finish, the chapter on how children see God is particularly interesting, in light of many recent attempts to explain religion naturalistically. (See my review of Dennett's "Breaking the Spell") In their young years, children seem to see God as a figure with human qualities (both phyically and spiritually). Even studies done with adults show that adults tend to apply human traits to god even when they "know" that God is omniscient and far from human. Bloom's take? Religion is (a) an attempt to explain the duality between the physical world and the mental world; and (b) an extentsion of our natural ability to apply the intentional stance by creation of a god figure to whose mind we can attribute human traits writ large.

interesting book all around. Bloom is a good writer and provides a good balance between clarity and profundity. Anyone who enjoys books exploring how biology affects the mind will enjoy this one as well.

As there already are quite a number of reviews, I will be brief. From my vantage point (as a philosopher of science), Bloom spins an entertaining socio-biological yarn, and 'backs it up' with evidence that could just as well provide a basis to justify a wide array of other hypotheses. There is little in his framework that provides for falsifiability, a hallmark of serious scientific inquiry. Furthermore, the large amount of factual mistakes, false similes and sometimes mind-boggling use of pop-culture (as already pointed out in another review) do not help to enhance the author's credibility on the points that matter. In my personal opinion, a poor contribution to science.

I bought this book expecting to learn the essentials of child development, as an introduction to the field of developmental neuroscience I intend to seriously take on. And that's not what it is about. It is more like a total perspective of the aspects of human behavior which are innate, those which emerge in childhood, and those which are purely socially constructed through culture. So, surprisingly, I learned many interesting points about when the emotion of disgust at own feces emerges (around the age of 4), when sense of moral justice kicks in (already 3 year-olds can recognize what's morally good), and why art has its origins in the theory of mind.

It's a sweet holiday read as Bloom has an easy going, story-telling writing style I enjoyed a lot. As a scientist, I also appreciated the reference list to every piece of research he cites provided at the back of the book. I will definitely come back to some of the surprising facts he pointed me to.

The moral is that we are born beasts and develop abilities that enable social coexistence with brain maturation and social acculturation. This book delineates what comes first and what is prerequisite for what we'd regard as human qualities (e.g. empathy, morality, artistic appreciation) with great nonchalance alluding to the ungracious episodes of slavery, genocide and torture in our history, and abnormal development, such as autism.

I still feel quite unsaturated by this book, however, because it concentrates on the "beautiful" aspects of human nature - belief in God, art, morality - while it doesn't say much about the great drive behind our evolutionary success on this planet, namely the aggressiveness and adaptability. I suppose I can feed this hunger with some other literature and keep my memories of "Descartes' baby" as a delicious opulent desert.

This is a brilliant and uncompromising synthesis of scientific knowledge about human nature and perception, stated with the confidence of a front-line investigator but also with sympathy for less rigorous world-views. Anyone who has ever asked 'Why are people like this?' should read this account in order to grasp what scientists take for granted. If the author was not able to explore the psychological appeal of religious belief fully, that is a lot to demand of a brief, well focused work.