New Podcast Release: Paul Bloom
The latest episode of "Lives Well Lived," the podcast I co-host with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, is now available.
Kasia and I had an enlightening conversation with Paul Bloom, a psychologist and author known for his work on the evolutionary basis of morality and for his provocative critique of the value of empathy. Below are some highlights from our discussion, lightly edited for clarity. You can now listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.
On Rational Compassion and Moral Actions:
Paul Bloom: "Our emotions in general, and compassion in particular, are motivators to drive us towards committing some sort of action, some sort of moral action, while rationality tells us which action to perform. Rationality assesses the situation, evaluates our goals, and decides how best to do things."
On the Role of Reason in Moral Decisions:
Paul Bloom: “If you don't appeal to reason, you can't explain moral progress, as you have, Peter, in your book, The Expanding Circle. You can't tell that story without reason and rationality."
On the Influence of Freud:
Paul Bloom: "Freud is wrong in just about every one of his particular claims... But his big ideas are very important and probably true. And I'm thinking here mostly of the big idea of the dynamic unconscious. That we can do things, make decisions, come to conclusions, get emotionally moved due to factors that we are not consciously aware of."
On Living a Good Life:
Paul Bloom: "I think I have good relationships with people who are close to me. I'm very close to my two adult sons. I'm very close to many of my students. I think, as a mentor and as a teacher, I've helped. I'd like to think I had a positive role in people's lives. My books have been at least attempts to inform, to entertain, to stimulate, to maybe make people act better, maybe in some way better than me."
Paul Bloom: "It's not things like eating meat that bother me the most. It's cases where I've disappointed people, where I've treated people badly. I'm working hard to be a good person. I take a lot of satisfaction when people tell me I've made a positive change in their lives. But I'm similarly conscious of cases where I have not done right by people. And it's what keeps me up at night."
Rationality (the principle of sense, the fundamental laws of meaning) also demand(s) that we have consistent and sound reasons in favour of what is the moral/right thing to do. The argument from (biological) evolution is still begging the question about the rightness of things, the rightness of our sentiments: what we have evolved to feel as the right thing to do is not necessarily aligned with the rational, objectively right thing to do. At the same time, the morally right thing to do cannot be irrational or else morality itself would be irrational. In short, moral realism/objectivism (or what we take for universal morality) demands a priori proofs of our moral claims.