A leading cognitive scientist argues a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone tissue.

From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Most of us neglect that babies are given birth to selfish and that it is the function of society-and especially parents-to transform them from small sociopaths into civilized beings. IN ONLY Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are actually hardwired with a sense of about Just Infants: The Roots of Great and Bad morality. Drawing on groundbreaking analysis at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, also before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ activities; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in stress; and also have a rudimentary sense of justice.

Still, this innate morality is bound, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, susceptible to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and viewpoint, Bloom explores how exactly we have come to surpass these restrictions. On the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy Group professors, and explores our frequently puzzling moral emotions about sex, politics, religion, and race.

In his analysis of the morality of children and adults, Bloom rejects the fashionable view that our moral decisions are driven mainly by gut feelings and unconscious biases. Just like reason has driven our great technological discoveries, he argues, it is reason and deliberation which makes possible our moral discoveries, such as the wrongness of slavery. Eventually, it is through our creativity, our compassion, and our uniquely human convenience of rational thought that we can transcend the primitive sense of morality we had been born with, getting more than simply babies.

Paul Bloom has a present for bringing abstract ideas to existence, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Simply Babies offers a radical new perspective on our moral lives.