From the book’s title, the reader expects to see the arguments presented revolve around the topics such as babies, good, and evil. Some of the reservations towards the book are the way Bloom mixes some of his concepts. Specifically, the author mentions a study finding that infants are not born as innate racists, with any racial prejudice and ‘them versus us’ mentality developing later in life (Bloom, 2013). The author stresses that babies have an innate moral sense. Bloom cites and expounds on Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson’s views, which suggests that some components of morality are natural to humans (Bloom, 2013). For example, Bloom supports most of his arguments with experimental evidence and evolutional theories.

There are multiple interesting and fascinating aspects to this book.

Even though the author offers broad coverage of the morality topic and the effective attempts to ensure that all the moral arguments are supported by substantial experimental evidence, there is a misalignment between what Bloom believes and what evidence shows. Bloom presents that certain aspects of moral senses are innate. The author argues that people should not seek the origin of moral behavior exclusively by looking at either nurture. The book is written by Paul Bloom, a development psychologist at Yale. The book Just Babies: The Origin of Good and Evil describes morality and poses arguments to justify whether moral sense is innate or learned through environmental interactions.

Just Babies by Paul Bloom