Name: 11.進化と感情と理性感情、その1 (11. Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part I)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:53:31.000Z
Duration: 53 min 15 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Professor Paul Bloom: On Monday we--I presented an

introduction to evolutionary psychology, the looking at

psychology from an evolutionary perspective, and trying to make

a case and give some examples of how it can help illuminate and

illustrate certain aspects of how the mind works.

One of the advantages of an evolutionary perspective on the

mind is that it forces us to look scientifically at what we

There are a lot of aspects of how we are and what we are and

They come so instinctively and easily it's difficult,

and sort of unnatural, to step back and explore them

scientifically but if we're going to be scientists and look

at the mind from a scientific perspective we have to get a

sort of distance from ourselves and ask questions that other

And the clearest case of this arises with the emotions.

And as a starting point there's a lovely quote from the

psychologist and philosopher William James that I want to

To the psychologist alone can such questions occur as:

Why do we smile when pleased and not scowl?

Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single

turn our wits upside down? The common man--[None of you

are the common man.] The common man can only say,

"Of course we smile. Of course our heart palpitates

at the sight of the crowd. Of course we love the maiden.

And so probably does each animal feel about the particular

things it tends to do in the presence of certain objects.

To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved;

to the bear the she-bear. To the broody hen,

the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a

creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not utterly

fascinating and precious and never to be too-much-sat-upon

object which it is to her. Now, there's a few things to

note about this passage. First, it's incredibly sexist.

It assumes not just merely in reflexive use of phrases.

It assumes that--William James assumes he's talking to males,

male humans who sometimes take the perspective of male bears.

You wouldn't normally--You wouldn't actually ever write

beautifully written and you're not--;also, not allowed to write

that way anymore either. It's poetic and lyrical and

if--William James characteristically writes that

Finally though, the point that he makes is a

all of these things seem natural to us but the reason why

they seem natural is not because they are in some sense necessary

or logical truths. Rather, they emerge from

contingent aspects of our biological nature.

And so we need to step back. We actually--We need to step

back and ask questions like--and these are questions we're going

to ask--Why does poop smell bad? Avoid the temptation to say,

"Well, poop smells bad because it's so stinky."

The stinkiness of poop is not an irreducible fact about the

Why does chocolate taste good? Well, chocolate--The good

tastiness of chocolate isn't some necessary fact about the

that doesn't hold true for many other creatures.

And so, we have to step back and ask why to us do we find

chocolate appealing? Why do we love our children?

Don't say they're lovable. Many of them are not [laughter]

and, as William James points out, every animal,

Suppose somebody walked up to you and slapped you in the face?

suddenly desire some cold soup? [laughter] No.

Those are stupid alternatives. Of course if somebody slapped

us you would--we would get angry or afraid.

someone does us a favor? Why don't we feel angry?

Why don't we feel fearful? What we're going to do

throughout this course is step back and ask these questions.

We're going to ask questions nobody would have otherwise

thought to ask, where the common man wouldn't

The first step to insight is to ask questions like why do things

fall down and not up? And I imagine the first person

who articulated the question aloud probably met with the

response saying, "What a stupid question.

Of course things fall down." Well, yes, of course things

fall down, but why? Why is our flesh warm?

Why does water turn solid when it gets cold?

These are natural facts about the universe,

but the naturalness needs to be explained and not merely

explore, throughout the course, what seems natural to us and

字幕リスト動画再生

11.進化と感情と理性感情、その1 (11. Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part I)

sort

perspective

people

fear