Can Psychology Explain How Your Mind Works? (Paul Bloom) 

It's amazing-and yet we take it for granted-how accessible information has become. I am from Ukraine and am currently in Ukraine, and I love science. After watching free lectures from Yale with professor Bloom several years ago, I constantly search for new videos, interviews with him, and look forward to his new books, etc., because his intelligence and compelling ideas combined with wit are astonishing, so I want to learn more and more. Had I not learned English (by the way, by listening to Paul Bloom and other scientists) and had I not had access to the Internet, I wouldn't have known most of this thought-provoking information. It's incredible how knowledge, curiosity, and the desire to learn unite people from around the world. Thank you for bringing him here; it was fascinating.

Great discussion! I follow Paul's work for many years now and I have learned a lot from him. The argument thought that a deterministic view of decision making leads to anyone comitting a crime walking free is misguided: people would still go to prison because we need to detain a brain prone to crime (not to harm others). Also, the fact that a brain is determined to committ a crime under some conditions does not exclude the fact that the same brain is determined to improve and learn from this punished behavior and not do it again, under other conditions. The intuition we all have that "determinism" means no change and no growth is wrong. Change and growth is possible and happens everyday... under predetermined conditions of course! 😅

Mind is a concept not an object. It is usually defined as some brain activity within a living human brain. Mind is to brain what Beat is to heart. So in explaining phenomena, we separate the objects and explain the actions. What is the mechanism? Is there an explanation? Otherwise, it resolves to opinion.

Very interesting Conversation thank you Paul Bloom and Michael Shermer.

I love that these interviews are timed with books releases. I’ll probably pick it up.

IMO, the hard problem with the “soft” science of psychology is the nuance of every human, biologically and environmentally. Much similarity, but I believe even more contrast.

Even if determinism is true, putting people in jail can still make sense for pragmatic reasons (as opposed to because they actually deserve it in the sense that their action was ultimately up to them). Indeed, our intuition that people should be punished is at root (even if now forgotten over time) pragmatic.

Thank you both for a wonderful video As far as free will is concerned I know I don't have any For those who imagines you have freewill freely fall in love or out of love or freely become a theist if you are an Atheist or an Atheist if you are a Theist Paradoxically since I realized that I have no free will my will power became stronger I am a radical monist and my ego is a social construct Tat Tuam Asi

On the money problem I have to say this discussion is very much predicated on the US situation. In a country where health care is universal and vacation weeks are prescribed and protected by law (and so on) money may make you happier - but the cut-off point is waaay lower, because for most people they don't buy those things to any important extent. (An example: I live in Sweden and recently had a serious health issue and so far the hospital and medical bills has cost close to nothing. And being home from work will not be a huge economic problem either.)

I realize that there are millions and millions of liberal non-literalist Christians, but I'm not sure that "most do not take things literally."

I haven't watched yet. But my answer to the title is, No. If it could it would already have done so, and if and when it can, it will say so.

I usually enjoy this show/podcast but this episode doesn't seem to be going anywhere (that's interesting)... I'm an hour in and not sure whether to listen to the second hour.

Paul Bloom and Michael Shermer are great thinkers.

Looks like the University of Toronto was and is the place to study psychology these days. Peterson and now Professor Bloom.

If you saw more than one person talks about the exact same thoughts suddenly and they suddenly cooperate or never accuse each other of theft then be sure that all of them are thieves agreed tactically to share the booty. especially if it’s something valuable such as time (mysterious since thousands of years) or in psychology: self concept, consciousness type one and type two, personal identity (human thoughts),…. etc

At about 1 h in, re what to do with people who are mentally damaged eg have a tumour that makes them commit a crime, what to do when someone had a horrific upbringing and committed a crime, and what if someone had no such impediments but committed a crime... If there is no free will (and how can there be, you either choose randomly, logically, or some blend of the two), then no one is to blame, so do we let them all off? NO!!! Prison serves 2 purposes in this situation: 1. It puts people out of circulation if they have committed a crime and are likely to re-offend. 2. It alters the perception of risk so that some criminals will be dissuaded from offending. The 'blame' approach leads to the idea of punishing people in painful ways. Cruel and unusual punishments. It is a way of vengeance. It is driven by the 'good' folks following their emotions rather than their rationality. But we do NOT let victims pursue criminals to exact vigilante justice, we have a legal system, with police, courts, lawyers, and prisons.

Good stuff, really one of the best, yup.

The mind is different from one minute to the next. Very difficult to study something like that. Just the imagination alone is probably immeasurable. Even if we solve "the hard problem" the ability to imagine would remain a mystery. You can literally imagine brand new ideas that have never existed before over and over again. Maybe that will be "the harder problem"? Great show!

I would ask the questions of... what does a rational global society look like? And what does a rational human being correspond to in this global society? As well as, does the human being feelings need a completion in evolution to be fully developed and rational? I would also think that if any action taken harms the planet, other life forces or your 'self' by way of any underdeveloped feelings, it would be irrational. Specifically because of the incompleteness in their rationality, intellect, wisdom or their morals continuing in development. Professors included, as these areas of the consciousness that embody itself so that by no means any of these damaging ideas do not reach the focus of the attention to bring the damages or rather suffering in the first occurrence. So there must be many influences that inhibit the functioning of the consciousness in any 'perfect world'. Besides for any of these feelings of underdevelopment in tension through their individual evolution regarding all human beings. At least until we all reach the same evolution of consciousness, we are irrational beings and very destructive, some more than others albeit.

I am somewhat disappointed by this discussion. I hoped I was going to learn something substantial, even some kind of revelation, beyond what is known through the recent mind-boggling progress of neurobiology and chemistry. First, the concept of "how the mind works" remains very mysterious here. What does it mean? Is this a weasel concept that eludes any clear definition? And, second, the concept of psychology "explaining" how the mind works remains to me anyway very nebulous. What kind of psychology is meant here? Experimental psychology? Intuitive psychology? Clinical psychology? I naively thought this kind of psychology could at best describe, not "explain". The product of psychology is delivered through language and this language describes the findings of experiments and results of life events. But the "Working of the Brain", if this is what is meant with the "working of the mind", is presented through a mix of anatomy (spatial drawings), chemistry (diagrams of elements interactions), and neurological activity (spatial descriptions of scrambled interconnections in an immense universe of neurons, and nuclei shooting action potentials and dispersing neurotransmitters all over the place through circuits and pathways). So what does it mean that the description of psychology is going to "explain" the physical processes of the brain as analyzed by neurobiology? Those are two different perceptions and presentations of mental activity, but one does not "explain" the other, they just both describe with different tools different correlating aspects of, hopefully, the same phenomenon, and they, again hopefully, complement each other. Take for example a scientist like Robert Sapolsky, whose major interest is human behavior, which he likes to describe both in its psychological dimension, and as supported by the underpinnings of brain circuitry. I cannot imagine what kind of lab would engage its team and efforts towards focusing on one style of perception, the psychological one, as primary. Instead of viewing all forms of studying mental phenomena as intimately correlated.. To me it seems like a dead end, a play of words, or, in the worst of cases, a waste of time.

Hm, so And what is wrong If we let Everybody out of Prison and see what happens? Or is the whole game over then?

Micheal Shermer, it's easy to take on believers of ancient stories that sound preposterous, but I don't see you speaking with any NDE researchers or dealing with the data on the veridical aspect of NDE'S. You should talk to resesrcher Dr. Bruce Greyson for an honest delve into the non physical. Until you atheists deal with this data, you'll get nowhere with solving the so called "hard problem" of consciousness.

By the way, I wrote what he said about phantom limbs and the existence of a plan in the brain that represents the exquisite details of entire human body many years ago, and he talked about language in other video, I wrote that too in more details on closer to truth many times since years ago too, take a look at chomsky, I recognised that since I was a little child (about 8 years old) that there’s built-in grammar ready to adapt any language and that language is just a symbolic representation of human thoughts,…etc if that’s new then this one is a thief too. but that’s not important, the important thing is the essence (must reach future generations clean) they will need all that to survive.

I feel like there's three kinds of minds maybe a fourth. Bacteria mind one, animal mind two, subjective mind three. I feel like when they talk about how we don't know certain things about the mind aliens already know😅😂

Most, if not all, findings and discoveries in AI have been made by psychologists. AI is the closest model of the human brain.

1:29:30 it’s a very complicated process of generating personal identity and that process has to do with the body and cortex in the brain.

Insects.. You're talking about the future. Are you ignoring of the state of the "little things ?"

Your mind comes from your brain, it doesn’t come your foot, shoulder, or thumbs right? You remove a persons brain and what they were is no more. Therefore when the brain dies there is no more you. It’s so strange people argue about this or develop entire theories how the mind lives on or transfers into another dimension etc etc etc. This must be because of fear of non existence. It’s not that scary and I’ll show you how. Think about all the memories you have from before you were conceived.?? Is that a scary thought? No. You didn’t exist in the universe so of course you cant remember that time just like you won’t have any more memories once the brain dies. Sure I want to live to 500 too, but that won’t happen. I’m not scared of that. I guess I look at it like we’re here for a short time and it’s over, so make things happen now while you can.!!

Souls *_cannot possibly_* be "immortal" in the Christian world view, because that belief conflicts with god's omnipotence. Doesn't god have the power to destroy souls? The theology of the Seventh-Day Adventists implicitly acknowledges this problem by teaching the "mortalist" belief that the body and the soul are integrated, they die together, and they would stay dead forever by default unless god works a miracle to resurrect them together for judgment. (This should remind you of the Epicurean view of death.) The body-and-soul combinations which don't make the cut for eternal life in heaven then die again, and stay dead forever.

To claim that physics is easier than psychology simply because physics has proven itself to be more successful is a fallacy. I can guarantee you that quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity are far more difficult to understand than any present theoretical model in psychology.

man that guy looks just like Al Gore

Sex is fuzzy, gender is fuzzy, sexual orientation is fuzzy and humans will exploit fuzziness to get what they want. So a man who didn’t develop into into someone who fits a fuzzy sex (no evidence of a DSD), who didn’t develop fuzzy psychological traits outside his gender (masculine boy), but did develop a fuzzy sexual orientation because he’s a heterosexual with a target location error, ie an autogynephile, should be treated as a woman by people socially, including women, & in law, even though the only thing that’s fuzzy about him is his sexual orientation? Does professor Bloom understand people transition for different reasons and to treat them all as homogenous because each group uses the term trans is what is stopping us from understanding each reason & finding solutions that will help us all get along? I suspect the “early onset” trans people he knows may have either had a fuzzy sex (DSD) and or a fuzzy gender (feminine boys) and a homosexual orientation - none of which women would feel were a threat to their dignity, privacy or safety. The latter group are the minority in the trans identifying born male population, generally pass & are just living their lives. AGP’s are the majority, generally don’t pass and are the most politically active as they lobby for self ID. That professor Bloom doesn’t understand the social consequences for this radical shift away from empiricism is a disappointment to me as someone whose work I’ve enjoyed learning from.

I wish I could get this conspiracy theory out of my head and maybe you guys can help----I am sure I have heard Michael debunk the following but here goes. Did Neal Armstrong really walk on the moon? Well, the photographs prove it---unless you are a professional photographer and point out that shooting a Hasselblad on the moon in 250° plus or minus zero cannot happen. The film would have been ruined. Buzz Aldrin only took one photo of Neal----while Neal took dozens of Buzz. Think about that; NASA would have had that as a number one project for publicity to have dozens of photos of the first man on the moon----but only one photo of the first man on the moon in one of the most historic moments in recorded history? Dunno, but that just doesn't fly for me. The fact that the director of NASA quit his job three days before the moon landing has also made no sense to me. Does that sound rational that someone would work all those years to get the project ready and then 3 days into the flight, the Director calls it quits? Neal Armstrong going out and trying the lander----crashing it and nearly dying if his parachute hadn't worked----the day before they took off for the moon has troubled me as well. Wasn't he showing the world that the lander really was not at all capable of landing on the Earth, let alone the moon? Coming in for the landing on the moon, Neal can be heard talking to Houston as if he were on a long-distance phone call with only the hum of a motor faintly audible in the background; the 10,000 pound thrust engine that they were sitting on had 120 to 150 decibels of sound that should have been heard. He should have been shouting. There were also no craters on any of the moon landings and Rockadine, the rocket engine company that developed the rocket engines were reportedly worried about the lander falling into a crater from the tremendous thrust of the rocket engine. There were no pebbles on the lander pods as well. No indication of any flame on the ground under the lander. No one who is a man with the little boy still alive in him wants to disbelieve the moon landing, but there are so many questions in the reality of it actually having taken place----and I have given examples of professional photographers etc., who have debunked photos, etc.

I like how Bloom is a subtle thinker. It works well with Shermer who can get too literal, like with his Trump cult story.

@5:43 '...I did my first chapter which was Freud...' Ooooh, I thought, finally a scientist (since Eysenck) is going to have a bash, in conversation, at so called depth psychology. Nope. They never do. Come on Shermer, get a guest on who is willing to take on Jung at least (America and Gabbering Jordan Peterson's Psych-Guru).

1:11:00 permanent memory is always there, temporary memory (working memory) actually it’s temporary working memory, psychological factors,…etc make people think that permanent memory is distorted but that is incorrect.

1:3000 you need to read that comment (amin omar) it’s related to both hemispheres of the brain and the process of generating both consciousness type one and so-called personal identity. Inner dialogue is related to the same process, but body (hormones, ….etc) affect the process.

1:18:40 that is so-called personal identity not the self, it’s not easy to recognise that because even though the self is always there.

1:19:20 it’s not easy to make it simpler but so-called personal identity is a kind of simulation of self concept, the characteristics (traits ) you talk about is other story, but transferring psychological traits via heart transplant is related to the same topic (very complex to go into details) but take it from human.

Hope Sam gets Paul again...

1:25:10 that is something else related to the presence of an accurate map of the entire body in the brain, at the end brain is required so any brain damage or ….. could distorts the map (there’s work on the map)

32:00 emotions are just part of self concept, they are not independent! emotions, permanent memory and consciousness type two are just part of self concept (they don’t exist independently).

Rationality: it’s a big topic, but it requires self recognition (not to recognise yourself in the mirror similar to some other types of irrational animals) but deep understanding of who you are and how your brain works, so you can filter pure thoughts out of emotions,….etc) Rationality the one I talk about is a process that takes time, it doesn’t come through claiming or pretending that you are rational entity! you have to know who you are , differentiate between consciousness type one and type two, what’s behind the inner dialogue inside your brain,…..etc. it’s a process that never come through claim or theft or ….. etc

I was surprised to learn this is only the 2nd most falsely reported cognitive bias peer review field of all only second to neurology. G0 figure!! I know that sychololgy has constantly been influenced by beliefs and trends. In usa FDR set us on this education plan that has been a Long plan of ramping up reforms that increased in problems inventing new labels of diagnose along the way. The 80s big reform caused serious problems in the idealistic innovative youth that tend be more rebelous and this got miss labeled as some stupid ADHD illness instead of addressing the actual direct source causing the issue thats help to contribute to massive homelessness. I remember 20+ years ago at Oxford string theorist got very pushy on qauntom biology and next thing you know the sychololgy department was radicalized by it and its spread onto the American sychololgy association where you can read the mission statement that sounds like a support system for people born in the wrong muliverse bodys. Our counselor are clearing out safe spaces for abused oracles to prophesize . I mean WTF is going on in this feild ?

This must reach future generations clean (intact) they will reach a point in science where they have no chance to survive without knowing that (they are your descendants)

there is a kind of so-called super-deterministic but related to the two cycles but to concise: there’s limited free will.

I don't understand why atheists are so concerned with what religious believers think and vice versa. If you don't feel a need to believe in God, well good for you. If you have a belief in God, well good for you. Your belief doesn't impact on mine and I am happy to let each one choose for themselves. It is really pointless to even think anything you say about this issue will change anyone else's mind. That is a journey each person must take on their own. It doesn't mean that either position makes you in need of therapy or mental health intervention. Just respect their right to their own views.

The brain is a computer, made by natural selection. So, we need biological evolution and cognitive science to learn about this topic.

1:22:00 that is so-called personal identity not the self, the process is very complex (no way to go into details because of its complexity)

1:16:00 uploading to the cloud! what can I say!

59:10 they are Hallucinators, both physical or material world and mental life do exist.

1:28:00 that is wrong to, it related to personal identity and changes in the body, self concept is in the background even though it’s what generated both consciousness type one and so-called personal identity. Take it from human.

1:22:50 self concept is one of the most advanced coding systems in existence itself (nothing would come into existence without science whatsoever “that is the rule “) there are two Abuznad and manipulated the apes badly since thousands of years ago. they think that this existence is easy peasy, but they want it easy peasy to fit in their little minds.

There’s something so dirty and irrational attracts the irrational thief apes to each other! irrationality and the faked imaginary irrational realm of the apes!

1:17:00 because they know nothing, they even cannot recognise themselves! the think that self concept and so-called personal identity are the same thing.

1:25:50 that is wrong.

Yeah, very likely this is one of the irrational thieves (I can’t read ape’s book) I watched a new video about his book, similar to this video) he beats around the bushes but all the signs indicate to a new thief ape. revelations from the sky (gods of the apes) or COVID-19 epidemic disease effect?! lations from the sky (gods of the apes) or COVID-19 epidemic disease effect?!

50:00 do you talk about personal identity and self concept?! take it from human: personal identity is a kind of simulation of self concept, both personal identity and consciousness type one are generated by self concept and triggered by action about 45 degree upwards from the limbic system. when you wake up that action takes place. no one can challenge human.

1:41:00 read carefully what I wrote before, so-called personal identity and the body (genetics)

1:17:40 more funny! Self concept location is the brain-stem, take it from human (no one can defy human logic) they can bounce as much as they can.

*Thank you Jesus for the gift of life, Blessings upon me and my family.$37,000 weekly profit Our lord Jesus have lifted up my Life!!!*

1:24:00 I know why but unfortunately not possible to talk about.

Can't take this channel seriously

Not really. Sin is the deciding factor in one's life.

1:18:00 Read the other comment (amin omar) you can find more details about the self. they are human thoughts, so precious and valuable, many irrational sick thieves have stolen and polluted human thoughts to write books, but that is so dangerous (different logic) and thoughts have source and process, I wrote them only for future generations.

1:22:30 read carefully what I wrote before.