/F!U1hU6h"M0H0Professor Paul Bloom: Let me begin by just reminding us wherewe are in this course, reminding us of what we've done and what we haveyet to do. We started by talking about the brain, the physical basis ofthought. And then we moved to some general introductions to somefoundational ideas in the study of psychology, Freud and Skinner. Wespent a bit of time on more cognitive stuff: development, language,vision, memory. Then we took a little break and the dean told us aboutlove. Then we dealt with the emotions, rationality, and evolution, anda lot of that. What we learned particularly regarding the evolution ofthe mind provided supporting material for what follows. We learnedabout cognitive neuroscience using the study of face recognition as animportant case study--human differences, behavioral genetics, natureand nurture, sex and food. My lecture was on sex. Dr. Brownell came andspoke to us about food. Today, morality. Next week, social thought andsocial behavior, mysteries; basically, a series of topics that don'tfit anywhere in the course and really make psychologists scratch theirheads. These topics are sleep, laughter, and religion, mental illness,two lectures on madness, what can go wrong in your minds, and a lastlecture on happiness. And then you're just done. You know a lot ofpsychology and a lot of stuff and you're well prepared for yourultimate major in psychology, ultimately graduate training at a goodschool.
How many people here are either psych majors or expect to becomepsych majors or cognitive science as though you could raise your handto? Okay. Good. It's nowhere near enough [laughter] and so I'll ask thequestion again. Once you deal with happiness and then mysteries, you'rereally not going to want to--What is there? Chemistry? Anthropology?[laughter] Pre-med? Give me a break. [laughter]心理学空间0sDP7~X/h+z
Okay. We're going to deal with three facets of morality. I'm goingto talk about moral feelings, moral judgments, and then moral actionwith particular focus on why good people do bad things, which will leadus to review and discuss the Milgram study, which was presented in themovie on Monday. Now, moral feeling is what we'll start off with andwe've already discussed this in a different context. The question is,'How could moral feelings evolve?" So, moral feelings we could view asfeelings of condemnation, shame, emotions like that--shame,condemnation, pride, righteous anger, but also simple affection, caringfor other people, wanting to do well by them, being upset if aninjustice is to be done by them. And you might think that the existenceof these feelings is a mystery from an evolutionary point of view. Ifevolution is survival of the fittest, nature red in tooth and claw, howcould animals evolve moral feelings? But in fact, we know the answer tothis. And there are two answers to this.
One answer is kin selection. So, evolution works at a level of thegenes and because of that it could give rise to animals that arethemselves altruistic. And they're altruistic because they act topreserve other animals that share the same genes. And so, I'm not goingto spend any time on this because we've discussed it in detail, but weknow from previous lectures that people will be generous to others. Andthere's an evolutionary explanation for your generosity towards kin. Itcould be mathematically worked out. Your caring, your moral feelingstowards other creatures to the extent of the proportion of genes thatyou share with them. The most altruistic behavior of all, giving yourlife to help another, can be explained in cold-blooded evolutionaryterms. Animals that are altruistic even to the point of dying to helpanother, those genes will, under some circumstances, be preserved overthe genes of people who are less caring. And that is one force towardskindness.