Lessa dá puxão de orelha na aluna: “Dilma tem medo”

Excelente, gostei muito da entrevista. Acho que o Brasil precisa de gente assim, que pense o país de forma estratégica mais como nação e menos como povo. Os descaminhos dos últimos 50 anos, a ausência de reformas de base, de cunho estrutural, foram sabatodas e depois parcialmente retomadas pela ditadura com um olhar muito mais para a burguesia letárgica da bélgica do que para o povão da India. O resultado é o fato do Brasil se tornar um dos países mais ricos e mais pobres do mundo ao mesmo tempo. A forma como isso se manifesta é numa classe e aspirantes a abastadas, alienadas do próprio país. O espírito industrial nunca existiu na nossa burguesia de mentalidade escravocrata e avessa ao risco. O preço desse espírito burguês tropical é a privatização dos lucros e a socialização dos prejuízos. A luta de classes tupiniquim não existe. As relações com nossos serviçais moreninhos sempre foi cordial pq nosso preconceito é velado, o brasileiro belga e o brasileiro indiano sabem desde pequeninhos quem vai comandar e quem será comandado no futuro. E assim formamos esse país esclerosado tanto no setor privado quanto no público...

Lessa dá puxão de orelha na aluna: “Dilma tem medo”

publicada quinta-feira, 06/03/2014 às 15:41 e atualizada sexta-feira, 07/03/2014 às 01:22

Por Aline Salgado e Octávio Costa, do Brasil Econômico

O carioca Carlos Frederico Theodoro Machado Ribeiro de Lessa tem um gosto incomum pelo debate. Ele forma, com Maria da Conceição da Tavares, o último bastião da escola estruturalista, que também se autointitula de nacional-desenvolvimentista.

Em entrevista ao Brasil Econômico, Carlos Lessa advertiu que, aos 77 anos, tem o direito garantido de ser irreverente. E atacou, sem meias palavras, a política econômica de Dilma Rousseff, sua ex-aluna.

Para ele, o Brasil pegou “um período de bonança” na última década com a exportações de produtos primários e equilibrou suas contas externas, mas poderia ter feito mais. “Acumulou reservas, mas não aumentou a taxa de investimento, que continua abaixo de 20% do PIB. Passamos a apostar, de novo, em exportar minério de ferro, café, milho, soja”.

O vento mudou e o país enfrenta agora a má vontade do mercado financeiro internacional, que cobra medidas ortodoxas de aperto fiscal. “Mas cortar o que e onde?”, pergunta. Ao comentar a ida de Dilma a Davos, Lessa afirma que ela se dobrou às pressões internacionais: “Nossa presidenta vai a Davos e diz: ‘Somos serventuários do Consenso de Washington’”.

Apesar das críticas, o economista prevê a reeleição de Dilma. “Marina não é oposição e os meninos de Pernambuco e Minas também não”.

O senhor ainda se considera um nacionalista?

Não é possível melhorar a condição social sem aumentar a oferta pública. E não há como ampliar a oferta pública semusar o Estado. Não há Estado mundial, então, tem que ser o Estado nacional. Por isso, a ideia de nação é fundamental. Eu olho o Brasil com muita angústia. Porém, quando eu comparo com a maior parte da África subsaariana, um pedaço importante do Oriente Médio, eu não posso me queixar.

O sr. acha que há uma onda de má vontade contra o Brasil?

A chamada onda de má vontade é um movimento simétrico ao ufanismo. A ideia, exaltada na entrada do novo milênio, de que finalmente o Brasil estava sendo reconhecido como Brics, é uma espécie de movimento dialético. Nunca levei a sério a ideia do Brics. O único denominador comum entre China, Rússia, Índia e Brasil é o tamanho do território. Tirando isso, Rússia, China e Índia têm bomba atômica, submarino nuclear, nós não temos nada disso. Eles são potências, e nós somos uma impotência do ponto de vista militar. Enquanto a industrialização chinesa é espetacular, estamos nos desindustrializando. Sempre achei que o Brasil não era emergente, mas submergente.

Mas quando se criou o termo, havia uma expectativa muito grande em relação ao Brasil.

Os conceitos históricos de Centro e Periferia foram sendo substituídos por neologismos, como Norte e Sul, Terceiro Mundo. Depois da queda do muro de Berlim, surgiu a questão: como a gente racha o mundo? Vamos deixar todo esse Terceiro Mundo em mãos de uma eventual hegemonia chinesa ou hindu? Não, vamos recortar: emergentes e não emergentes. Por que colocar o Brasil nos emergentes, se o Brasil estava submergindo?

Mas as exportações brasileiras ainda estão fortes…

O cenário é favorável, por causa da China. Com a ascensão da China e da Índia, aumentou a demanda pelos produtos primários, o que gerou uma valorização desses produtos, para a desvalorização dos artigos industriais. O que se viu, imediatamente, no discurso brasileiro, foi um retrocessonas forças produtivas. Passamos a apostar, de novo, em exportar minério de ferro, café, milho, soja. E esse equívoco parecia confirmado, porque os preços de todas as commodities subiam, e o dos produtos industriais barateavam. Na lógica do imediatismo pragmático brasileiro, do servilismo colonial, vamos fazer do Brasil uma economia primário exportadora.

Mas o sr. não acha que o Brasil ganhou com as exportações?

O Brasil pegou, junto com outros países da América do Sul e da África, um período de bonança nas exportações primárias. O boom chinês empurrou os preços para cima e, ao mesmo tempo, reduziu o preço dos produtos industriais. O Brasil teve, por mais de dez anos, bonança nas suas contas externas, apoiado por uma política de absoluta abertura do sistema financeiro brasileiro e articulação como sistema financeiro mundial. E aí conseguiu combinar um superávit expressivo na balança comercial com um superávit na balança de capitais.

Então, quer dizer que o vento mudou? É uma má vontade?

Não. É realismo. Como o Brasil se abriu de uma extensão total, completa e absoluta, eles não podem reconhecer isso. É necessário fazer o discurso de que a abertura brasileira não foi totalmente completa, diferentemente do México, onde se abriu tudo. O México está se encaminhando para ser um estado norte-americano.

Mas nossa presidenta esteve em Davos e disse aos empresários: “Eu estou com vocês”.

Apesar de ela ter reafirmado o compromisso com os fundamentos econômicos e o tripé, a desconfiança com a economia não mudou. Mas esse discurso não é só norte-americano, é também do sistema bancário brasileiro. O grande círculo exportador primário brasileiro comunga muito da ideia de tornar o Brasil, novamente, uma economia primário-exportadora. Além disso, acho que o sistema bancário no Brasil nada em felicidade, porque tem uma rentabilidade patrimonial duas vezes superior à média da indústria.

Mas, o discurso externo é de que Dilma expandiu muito o gasto público…

Quem faz esse discurso são os bancos brasileiros e, para minha tragédia, a Fiesp e a Firjan também. Só vejo um discurso empresarial na contramão, que é o da Abimaq. Eu vejo o discurso da Fiesp e da Firjan quase aplaudindo integralmente a ideia primário-exportadora. A lógica da empresa industrial é dominar o mercado. Para mantê-lo, maximiza-se o ganho. Se puder importar de fora, tem um custo mais baixo.

Em entrevista ao Brasil Econômico, Paulo Francini, da Fiesp, falou que, há 15 anos, a indústria representava mais de 20% do PIB. Hoje, só representa 13%, e a previsão é de 9%, daqui a alguns anos.

O Francini é uma exceção, porque é nacional-desenvolvimentista. Eu vejo esse esvaziamento da indústria com horror. Para a minha surpresa, as empreiteiras brasileiras não fazem parte da linha de frente em defesa da indústria. Elas, por definição, dependem do investimento público. Mas eu não as vejo tão preocupadas como investimento público. E tem um discurso quase universal, na área empresarial, que converge com essa coisa externa de desvalorização do Brasil: “O Brasil tem contas mal geridas”. Como se resolve isso? Cortando gastos públicos. Nossa presidenta vai a Davos e diz: “Somos serventuários do Consenso de Washington”. Continua a pressão contra o Brasil e ela está preocupada em dizer que estamos nos comportando bem.

Ao mesmo tempo, gente como Paulo Nogueira Batista e Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo diz que é preciso dar alguma demonstração para investidores estrangeiros.

Vamos pensar geopoliticamente. Os EUA estão querendo diminuir a sua independência do petróleo do Oriente Médio, e nada melhor do que se voltar para o Atlântico Sul. Há aqui a imensa reserva venezuelana e o nosso pré-sal. Nesse contexto, nada mais importante do que o Brasil. O que não pode aparecer na América do Sul? Um rebelde, como a Venezuela ou a Argentina.

O Brasil é peça estratégica na geopolítica norte-americana?

É essencial.

Mas se nós somos essenciais, porque ficam atacando nossa política econômica?

Para nos subordinar. Você acha que o desenvolvimento brasileiro, qualquer laivo de autonomia, interessa aos EUA? Sabe o que deve estar irritando o Pentágono? O Brasil ter escolhido um caça sueco…

O sr. acredita na reeleição de Dilma?

Sim. Sabe por quê? Não há oposição a ela. Marina não é oposição, os meninos de Minas, de Pernambuco, não são. A Marina diz que Dilma não fez tão bem quanto o Lula. O menino de Pernambuco critica que ela não faz a política estabilizadora correta. E o menino de Minas fala a mesma coisa. No momento, não há discurso de oposição. O que se tem é muita gente incomodada com a situação atual, mas não há espaço para jogar isso em cima de ninguém.

E o corte no orçamento?

Se Dilma cortar o orçamento na educação e na saúde, ela terá problemas. Os médicos e a população vão contra ela. Você acha que ela vai cortar onde? Em obras públicas e pavimentação. Na energia elétrica? Não, porque teria que que elevar a tarifa de energia. Criaram uma equação que é ruim. Sabe o que os neoliberais fazem? Dizem que se está gastando muito. Há maneiras de enfrentar, mas é preciso ter coragem. E Dilma não tem. Não dá para subsidiar transporte urbano, consumo de energia elétrica e gasolina, não dá!

Mas e o problema da inflação?

Dilma represou tudo: o aumento da energia elétrica, da gasolina. O que acho mais óbvio é que a inflação vai acontecer, independentemente do que o governo faça. Por uma razão simples: toda vez que o empresário ver que não há perspectiva dinâmica para frente, ele vai explorar ao máximo as condições de mercado. Quando ele faz isso, joga o preço para cima. Na cabeça dos empresários o câmbio vai evoluir desfavoravelmente para o real. E o que eles farão? Se proteger, antecipando isso – ou seja, aumentando os preços. A inflação vem, não adianta ficar com medinho. O problema é que o desequilíbrio estrutural que foi criado no Brasil é assustador. Não quero dizer isso, porque, quando falo, aumenta o medo. Você pode até tentar evitar um cenário de inflação. Mas, para isso, teria que se fazer uma política brutal de asfixia. Que produziria uma taxa de crescimento negativo – que não é o que o governo quer. Por isso se busca um corte no orçamento, mas acho que será um corte de mentira.

O governo recuou na política nacional-desenvolvimentista?

Para mim, ela não foi nada nacional-desenvolvimentista.

Mas a política deu ênfase ao mercado interno…

Isso é uma brincadeira. O investimento público cresceu em alguns problemas de infraestrutura, mas qual é a reconstrução industrial?

E a nova classe média?

Se você olhar o Brasil dos anos 2000, inquestionavelmente houve uma melhoria do padrão de vida na base social. Mas isso foi viabilizado pela melhor folga que o Brasil teve nas relações externas, que permitiram uma política de estabilização razoavelmente convencional e uma política social que, na periferia, fez algumas coisas relevantes. Primeiro, por não comprimir o salário-mínimo real, elevando-o. Segundo, avançou de maneira razoável a cobertura dos setores mais frágeis da sociedade -basicamente, pelo Bolsa Família e outros programas sociais.Terceiro, ao conseguir um câmbio favorável, ampliou a oferta de alimentos sem pressão significativa nos preços. Por fim, a presença do PT melhorou a formalização dos contratos de trabalho. Mas política de mercado interno, só houve uma: garantir a demanda efetiva para veículos automotores e eletrodomésticos. Na verdade, você facilitou, imensamente, o que eu chamo de “modelo Casas Bahia”. Do ponto de vista macrodinâmico, o que não foi positivo foi a taxa de investimento, que ficou abaixo de 20% do PIB.

Mas agora tem as concessões…

Não vão conseguir. Uma coisa é eu aplicar, comprando o ativo pré-existente; outra coisa é arriscar em um futuro que não sei qual é. A transferência de propriedade ou a outorga de uma responsabilidade não gera, inexoravelmente, o investimento.

No exterior, fala-se que a economia brasileira é vulnerável, inclusive, ao fortalecimento do dólar.

O Brasil sempre foi vulnerável. Houve um pequeno período, nos últimos oito a dez anos, em que o país foi beneficiado por uma mudança da lógica de preços relativos internacionais. Os produtos primários se valorizaram muito e os industriais, em termos relativos, menos. No entanto, o Brasil não soube aproveitar esse período, não elevou a taxa de investimento, não melhorou a infraestrutura. Estamos à beira de um apagão energético e o apagão da mobilidade urbana é mais que visível.

O que faltou?

Um projeto nacional e o desenvolvimento das forças produtivas. Eu tive a oportunidade de conviver bastante com o Lula, nos anos em que fui presidente do BNDES. Percebi que a ideia de povo existe com muita clareza na cabeçado Lula, mas a ideia de nação, não. Sem desenvolver as forças produtivas, você não consegue desenvolver as forças sociais a longo prazo. Nós geramos empregos de qualidade, de forma intensa, até o início dos anos 80. Depois, esse crescimento foi medíocre. Em seguida, começa uma desindustrialização, e o crescimento continua medíocre. E continua se projetando medíocre. Se a taxa de investimento é medíocre, você não vai para lugar nenhum. Aí é claro que a produtividade não cresce.

E os próximos anos?

Digo que, mantidas as condições atuais, vamos enfrentar uma crise social colossal.

Pelo aumento do desemprego?

Não. Eu acho que essa enorme nova classe média é um protagonista social imprevisível. Você não pode despertar a visão de inserção e depois cortá-la. A menos que a economia brasileira consiga sustentar um ritmo bom de crescimento, o cenário mudará. Vamos supor que o Brasil abaixe toda a cabeça e siga a cartilha do sistema financeiro internacional. O que haverá é uma mediocridade adicional à já existente, talvez com taxas de crescimento negativas. Eu não acho que a arrumação das variáveis macroeconômicas, a partir de uma visão neoliberal, retome o crescimento. Aliás, se fosse assim, o mundo já teria superado a crise mundial.

O sr. diz que governo seguiu o Consenso de Washington. Mas o PT não desalinhou um pouco?

Não tenho essa visão. Fui para o governo do PT, nunca tendo sido do PT, porque pensava que a eleição do Lula seria um vetor novo e, se minimamente o programa do PT fosse seguido, seria possível avançar. Passei dois anos no BNDES e estive com Lula quase diariamente.Percebi essa questão das ideias de povo e nação da qual falei. Do ponto de vista macrodinâmico, vejo hoje que eu estava certo: caminhar-se-ia para um desastre. Cansei de falar: o endividamento familiar não é maneira de se dinamizar a economia. Você só eleva o investimento pelo aumento da taxa, coisa que o neoliberal vê como um pecado mortal.

Mas o Mantega é acusado de adotar uma política frouxa em relação aos gastos públicos.

Pelo seguinte: você tem que encontrar algum demônio. Não pode dizer que o demônio está no sistema financeiro – que privilegia, no limite, o rendimento das instituições financeiras. Não pode dizer que houve um equívoco em desproteger a base industrial. Pergunto: tem algum interesse bancário perdedor no Brasil? Não. Talvez, pudessem ter ganhos maiores, por exemplo, se pudessem assumir o controle de um Banco do Brasil, esquartejar uma Caixa Econômica, e botar o BNDES na função de mero repassatário de fundos. Ainda não conseguiram. Mas o trabalho é intenso. O discurso dominante é o de que a políticado governo foi furada, porque gastou muito. A pergunta que faço é: emquê? Aí se faz uma porção de discursos condenando essas coisas. E a educação brasileira, melhorou? Não. E a saúde? Não. Como está a energia? À beira de um apagão. Como está o transporte? Vivemos um problema seríssimo na estrutura logística. Qual foi o problema estrutural brasileiro enfrentado? Infelizmente, nenhum. Agora, se você me perguntar: houve uma melhoria para o povão? Houve. Melhor ainda, para o não povão.

O sr., então, não cortaria os gastos, como os neoliberais querem fazer?

Eu não sei que gastos eles vão cortar. Se você tiver uma quantidade grande de chefias intermediárias dispensáveis, dá para cortar. Faz uma trajetória do que está acontecendo com os cargos intermediários da Petrobras e do BNDES, e você vai ficar assustado com a multiplicação deles. Você vai cortar na saúde em um momento em que se pede mais saúde e menos Fifa? Pode ser, mas se cortar, perde a eleição. Vão paralisar é programas de gastos públicos de investimento e de novas obras, programas que, no conjunto, deveriam ter sido feitos há 10, 15 anos.

O Banco Central diz que um dos instrumentos que tem na mão é elevar os juros…

Mas o que o Banco Central não diz é que ele tem outros instrumentos na mão. O câmbio. Ele não diz que aumenta os juros para elevar a conta de atração do capital de fora.

É preocupante esse caminho de se elevar juros?

O que me parece é que esse caminho já demonstrou que é uma trajetória maravilhosa para os balanços do sistema financeiro e para as aplicações financeiras. O liberal brasileiro vê as coisas dando errado e coloca a culpa no Mantega como se ele fosse superpoderoso. Quem tem poder mesmo no Brasil é o secretário do Tesouro, que executa o orçamento, e o Banco Central, que controla crédito e fluxo de dinheiro dentro e fora do país.

E o BNDES?

Eu fui presidente do Banco e sei que ele éimportante para o futuro. Está bancando estados, municípios. Bancando de maneira espantosa a indústria automobilística. Mas não está seguindo nenhum projeto nacional-desenvolvimentista. Está servindo para fazer operações de compensação nesse cenário. Mas a expansão de operações de crédito não é sinal de saúde da economia, é um indicador de que ele vai sendo usado pragmaticamente para segurar as contas, de Eike Batista a outras coisas.

Como o sr. vê o episódio dos blackblocs? Isso afeta ou não a imagem da presidenta Dilma?

Desde o início das manifestações, tenho aprendido muito. Nesse episódio do cinegrafista, aprendi que um rojão é mortal e que qualquer pessoa pode comprá-lo livremente. Não entendo muito essa coisa de black boy, para mim é um mistério. Fomos de terno preto para o leilão de Libra, mas não conseguimos número suficiente de pessoas para fazer um cordão de isolamento frente à polícia. Eu queria ver se os policiais teriam coragem de jogar balas de borracha em nós, eu um velho de gravata, defendendo “o petróleo é nosso”. A cobertura da imprensa também foi uma coisa horrorosa, ninguém mostrou o lado pacífico e organizado da manifestação. Apenas uma correria, com carro da imprensa virado e incêndio de um banheiro. Acho que interessa muito ao regime que o povão tenha medo de ir para a rua protestar. A violência trabalha contra a ideia da manifestação. Mas não tenho simpatia pelos black blocs. O pessoal do povão da periferia tem horror a eles. Sabe por quê? Veja os pontos de ônibus quebrados… meus empregados ficam furiosos!

Você acha que a Copa será afetada pelas manifestações?

Foi e continuará sendo. Nas manifestações de julho, não vi nenhum discurso contra o capitalismo estrangeiro e contra o imperialismo O discurso dos manifestantes foi contra a Fifa. E o governo brasileiro cedeu à Fifa, primeiro reduzindo o tamanho dos estádios e, depois, impedindo de se aproximar deles. Do ponto de vista popular os custos brutais nas obras dos estádios são a demonstração inequívoca de que o governo brasileiro é favorável à corrupção. A reforma do Maracanã é uma vergonha, gastaram mais de R$ 1 bilhão.

O sr. acredita que o acirramento das ruas pode tornar a reeleição de Dilma mais difícil?

Os ingredientes para um ano conturbado estão dados. Acho que a população das cidades está extremamente incomodada com a mobilidade urbana. Até agora a Dilma não se desgastou tanto, mas os governadores, sim. Caiu a popularidade dela, mas ela não apareceu estigmatizada nas manifestações.

E que conselho o sr. daria à sua ex-aluna Dilma na economia?

Ela foi uma boa aluna, sabe o que está fazendo. Se faz bobagem, é porque no balanço político ela acredita que está certa. Modéstia à parte, ela foi aluna dos melhores economistas do país. É muito inteligente. Mas acho que tem muito medo de enfrentar as coisas. Enquanto a Cristina Kirchner tem mais coragem, mas não sabe direito o que faz. As decisões macroeconômicas partem dela, não tenho dúvida. Acho que o Mantega é um operador, não acredito que esteja formulando nada. A política econômica brasileira seguiu esse rumo, apesar de o Lula ter sido advertido de que era um rumo perigosíssimo. Eu o adverti. E não fui só eu.

My Struggle: Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgård
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Karl Ove Knausgaard é o Proust da pós-modernidade. Nessa série ele é reconhecido pelo polêmico trabalho de abordar os elementos mais íntimos que formaram suas experiências.

A Morte do Pai é o primeiro tomo da série "MINHA LUTA" e trata-se de uma busca de uma essência do SER a partir de uma rememoração dos eventos da infância, da adolescência e da fase universitária na Noruega até o tempo presente do narrador: escritor e pai de família, num país estrangeiro (Suécia) voltando a terra natal para fazer as pazes com passado e enterrar o Pai, de quem guardava sentimentos confusos de raiva e de um sutil afeto (busca de reconhecimento ou disputa).

Para alcançar a formação do homem, que ao reconciliar-se com seu passado descobre sua essência, a história evolui por meio dos detalhes íntimos da vida do autor. Faz interpolações entre o objetivo e o subjetivo, a partir de eventos do passado na tentativa de extrair as belezas, os medos, os amores e as angústias das trivialidades da vida que impactam na formação do SER.

A escrita rememorativa serve para identificar os traumas acumulados para assim achar sua inspiração que lhe possibilita não apenas realizar-se como escritor, mas também como homem.

Sob minha perspectiva, o autor aborda em uma cadência detalhista as diversas épocas de sua vida e extrai momentos subjetivos em que a essência é manifestada em paralelo aos diversos eventos: desde como lidar com o esporro do pai por conta das notas na escola, ou mesmo, a expectativa frustrada da fantasia da primeira relação sexual passando pela dinâmica de chefe de família na Suécia ou mesmo nos preparativos fúnebres para o enterro do pai e suas macabras reflexões sobre a vida e o perecimento humano.


“For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.”


“As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. *That is when time begins to pick up speed*. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know that is happening we are fort, fifty, sixty... *Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance.* Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it.”


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Wired for Creationism?

Paul Bloom, the author of "Is God an Accident," on why—ironically—belief in Intelligent Design may be an inherited trait

   The concept of souls as separate from bodies, which in turn leads to spirituality and faith in the afterlife.

Tendency to "see intention where only artifice or accident exists."

A belief in the divine dominates virtually every culture on earth.

Bloom posits that our spiritual tendencies emerged somewhere in the evolutionary process

Humans have an unprecedented knack for finding patterns and reading intentions.

Humans are "wired" from infancy to believe in God.

Richard Dawkins:

If you know about it and you can understand it, but you tell people that creationism is the way to go, then you're being evil. He's not taking into account emotional and psychological facts about people. Dawkins doesn't look enough at the role of human nature in why people hold these beliefs.You have to have some understanding and sympathy for where they're coming from. People who are creationists aren't just morons.

Kids:

They understand material objects and gravity and space. And they understand people. Humans have what's sometimes called theory of mind, or mind-reading capacity. We know how other minds work, and we're extremely adroit at social reasoning.

But science deals with vast scales of time. Evolution is a process that unfolds over millions of years, a largely hidden process that has to be inferred through indirect evidence.For most of human history, people thought that the earth was flat.

Jean Piaget said a lot of wrong things, but one thing he said that's probably right is that people are natural animists.

We naturally see agency and goals in the natural world.

Whether Islam or Greek mythology is a more natural fit for the human mind?

The way Jews and Christians worship God is, I think, a bit of an anomaly.

                He's quite quick to anger; he describes himself as a "jealous God." He battles with the Pharaoh to basically show people that he is the more powerful force.

I think that people are wired to be dualists and creationists. But I don't know that this brings them to monotheism in particular.

The theologically correct version of religion, and that is generally sophisticated. And then you have the stuff that people actually believe

What actual Buddhists on the street believe, they believe in a lot of superstition, they believe in dualism, they believe in creationism, treat the Buddha as a Christ figure.

Most people have a kind of Stone Age approach to religion:

They believe in the same kind of religion people believed in thousands of years ago

How people are predisposed to "see intention where only artifice or accident exists."

We're natural conspiracy theorists, hypersensitive to signs of intelligence. So when it's there, we find it. natural catastrophes

Something awful like the hurricane: "It was God's will."

And that's another difference between social understanding and physical understanding.

American Beauty where the character shows a video of a plastic bag floating in the wind. He says, "That's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things," and he remembers feeling an "incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever."

they don't generally feel that the rocks and the water are just cold and lifeless.

when you see beauty in nature, you infer some divine artist. Someone who has a scientific worldview can actually get more appreciation from nature than someone with a religious worldview. When you look at the actual facts of how the Grand Canyon was formed, and you look at the actual nuances of Darwinian evolution, it's far more interesting, far more beautiful, than what you find in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

"What Is Life?" in which he tried to understand how material objects can be alive and resist entropy

There are some philosophers who believe that the result of science is that there's no such thing as consciousness or no such thing as free will.

The identity inside the body is a continuum

How a mere physical object could give rise to an experience of selfhood

Schizophrenia is not demonic possession. Religious answers are deeply unsatisfactory. I think we now know a hell of a lot about what's not the answer.

Memory is in the brain, not in the ether or spirit world

Very far from a solution to how a physical brain can give rise to mental life

If he was raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, or if he was raised Islamic or fundamentalist Christian, he would think differently. In that way, parents and culture do play a role.

Most religions, for example, given the times they were created, have bizarre views about sex roles and the place of homosexuals in society.

Making more money doesn't tend to make you happier unless you're living in poverty. But meditation does. That and getting married.

Meditative practice

Practical benefits for making our lives better.

People used ginkgo biloba as an antidepressant for a while, before they found out it had very bad side effects. They did it because it was herbal, and so they saw it as intrinsically better than drugs like Prozac.

What distinguishes art from non-art is the intention underlying it

Marcel Duchamp, which gets to be art just by virtue of the intent of its creator. This sort of intuition seems to be shared by young children.But what matters is that only the second was created through an act of will. This is the one that two-year-olds will see as art.

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Wired for Creationism?

Paul Bloom, the author of "Is God an Accident," on why—ironically—belief in Intelligent Design may be an inherited trait

JENNIE ROTHENBERG GRITZNOV 22 2005, 6:21 PM ET

Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, is an author and researcher who studies human belief in the supernatural. He is also the father of two small boys who have theories of their own. One evening, Bloom recalls, his six-year-old son Max burst out, "You can make me go to bed, but you can't make me go to sleep. It's my brain!" Intrigued, Bloom pressed his son to say more about his brain and how it worked. Max explained that his brain was responsible for thinking and perceiving but not for more intimate experiences such as dreaming, loving, or feeling sad. "That's what I do," Max informed his father, "though my brain might help me out."

Bloom takes note when his children, or any other children, wax philosophical about the body and the soul. As a rationalist and a self-declared atheist, he rejects all notions of spirits, deities, and the afterlife. As a researcher, however, he has discovered that children are predisposed to divide the world into two categories: the physical and the immaterial. Five-month-old babies show clear signs of understanding the basic properties of objects; for example, that they are solid, will fall if dropped, and do not spontaneously disappear. These infants also show signs of responding to and understanding the world of emotions and personal relations—recognizing familiar voices, for instance, and responding to happiness or fear. As Bloom puts it, these two sets of abilities "can be seen as akin to two distinct computers, running separate programs."

With this kind of dual psychological wiring, he argues, it is no wonder that the majority of humans believe in the concept of souls as separate from bodies, which in turn leads to spirituality and faith in the afterlife. To Bloom, all religions everywhere are essentially variations on the same theme. He draws no real distinction between East and West, or between First-World and Third-World nations. What interests him is the human tendency to "see intention where only artifice or accident exists." Unlike many of his fellow atheists, Bloom is not content to simply dismiss religious people as misguided. Instead, he questions why a belief in the divine dominates virtually every culture on earth.

In his December 2005 article in The Atlantic, provocatively titled "Is God an Accident?," Bloom concludes that "the universal themes of religion are not learned." Taking his cues from Darwin, Bloom posits that our spiritual tendencies emerged somewhere in the evolutionary process, most likely as "accidental by-products" of other traits. As a species, humans have an unprecedented knack for finding patterns and reading intentions. Unfortunately, to Bloom's mind, this tendency to read intelligence into everything sometimes gets out of hand:

People have a terrible eye for randomness. If you show them a string of heads and tails that was produced by a random-number generator, they tend to think it was rigged—it looks orderly to them, too orderly. After 9/11 people claimed to see Satan in the billowing smoke from the World Trade Center. Before that some people were stirred by the Nun Bun, a baked good that bore an eerie resemblance to Mother Teresa. In November of 2004 someone posted on eBay a five-year-old grilled-cheese sandwich that looked remarkably like the Virgin Mary; it sold for $28,000 ... Older readers who lived their formative years before CDs and MPEGs might remember listening for the significant and sometimes scatological messages that were said to come from records playing backwards.

Bloom sums up his own worldview by inverting the old Hans Christian Andersen tale to proclaim, "the clothes have no emperor." The "clothes," to Bloom's mind, are the physical objects that make up the world: oceans and landforms that took shape over slow millennia, creatures that evolved through natural selection, gray matter that generates all of our thoughts and behavior. That the majority of people on earth are inclined to perceive all of this as the externalization of something boundless and meaningful is, according to Bloom, an evolutionaryfluke; not evidence for an all-powerful Being. Even so, his work with children has left Bloom convinced that all humans, even his own children, will inevitably see design and divinity in the world: "Creationism—and belief in God," he writes, "is bred in the bone."

Paul Bloom lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he and his graduate students research such wide-ranging topics as bodies and souls, art and fiction, and moral reasoning. We spoke by telephone on October 10.

—Jennie Rothenberg

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Why do you think it is that more philosophers and researchers haven't explored whether humans are "wired" from infancy to believe in God?

It's a good question. I think people on both sides of this aren't paying enough attention to how our natural way of seeing the world affects our religion and faith. Take someone like Richard Dawkins, whom I respect a lot. I agree with him on the facts. But when he talks about people who are creationists, he says they're either stupid, ignorant, or downright evil. His point of view is that there's an excellent case for Darwinian theory, so if you don't know about it, you're ignorant; if you can't understand it, you're stupid; and if you know about it and you can understand it, but you tell people that creationism is the way to go, then you're being evil.

The problem is, he's not taking into account emotional and psychological facts about people. Dawkins doesn't look enough at the role of human nature in why people hold these beliefs. If you want to effect change in how people think—which Dawkins definitely does, and I do, too—you have to have some understanding and sympathy for where they're coming from. People who are creationists aren't just morons.

But is the rejection of science really a part of human nature? According to your article, babies understand how the natural world operates.

I think you have to make a distinction. Babies have an extraordinary understanding of the world. But they have an understanding of the "middle-sized" world that we've evolved in. They understand material objects and gravity and space. And they understand people. Humans have what's sometimes called theory of mind, or mind-reading capacity. We know how other minds work, and we're extremely adroit at social reasoning. So you're right. People are very smart in this way, naturally smart. And this is the sort of smartness that evolves from natural selection.

But science deals with vast scales of time. Evolution is a process that unfolds over millions of years, a largely hidden process that has to be inferred through indirect evidence. For most of human history, people thought that the earth was flat. There's nothing in the wiring of your brain to tell you that it isn't flat. A large part of science is demolishing common sense.

You describe babies as natural dualists. But how can we be so sure that they separate the physical world from the world of feelings? Perhaps when an object falls from a table, they see it as wanting to go toward the ground.

There's a lot of debate about that. We know that if we show babies objects that move in an animate fashion they attribute to these objects intentions and goals and desires. What some people have suggested is that they overextend this social mode of interpretation. Jean Piaget said a lot of wrong things, but one thing he said that's probably right is that people are natural animists. We naturally see agency and goals in the natural world. So I wouldn't be surprised if babies, when they see something fall off the table, think it's alive.

The success of stuffed animals would seem to suggest that babies can attribute human qualities to non-living things. I've even seen Orthodox Jewish children cuddling with plush Torahs.

Yes, children imbue all sorts of inanimate things with emotional qualities, things like teddy bears and often blankets. Were you raised Orthodox?

No, I wasn't. But it sounds like you were. You begin your article with a story about your childhood rabbi who believed that the world was only a few thousand years old and that it would soon be coming to an end.

I was raised Conservative. But I grew up in a suburb of Montreal. There was just one synagogue in town, and it was Lubavitch [a Hasidic sect]. My parents dutifully brought us to that synagogue. The rabbi had a bumper sticker that said something like "We want the Messiah now." What's weird about this rabbi of mine—what struck me so much that I wanted to begin the article that way—is that he was no zealot. He was a smart guy. He just believed the world was going to end.

Right now, I live in this tiny academic enclave with people who think just like me. But when you look at polls, you'll see that the world is composed of a strong majority of believers. Most people are just like my rabbi.

You seem to take an "all or nothing" approach to religion. Is it possible to explore, through scientific research, whether human beings are predisposed to believe in one God or in multiple gods—for instance, whether Islam or Greek mythology is a more natural fit for the human mind?

The idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipotent God is not universal. Many religions don't have such things. Often the spiritual forces are stupid or malevolent. The way Jews and Christians worship God is, I think, a bit of an anomaly. It doesn't come naturally to people. I think that people are wired to be dualists and creationists. But I don't know that this brings them to monotheism in particular.

The modern idea of a God who is above human characteristics was not well represented in the past. If you read the Old Testament, God has very human qualities. He's quite quick to anger; he describes himself as a "jealous God." He battles with the Pharaoh to basically show people that he is the more powerful force. We tend naturally to make gods in our own image. So we understand the idea of a jealous God or a God who wants sacrifices.

Even within one religion, the tone and style of belief can change so much over time. When you look at the Hebrew Bible, there's a lot of emphasis on sacrifice and ritual. Now Judaism has become something more abstract, based on ideas and Talmudic discourse. How does this tie into your research on the way human beings perceive the divine?

You have, on the one hand, the theologically correct version of religion, and that is generally sophisticated. And then you have the stuff that people actually believe. People have studied this a lot in Buddhism, because Buddhism is supposed to be extremely advanced and linked up with modern science. But when you look at what actual Buddhists on the street believe, they believe in a lot of superstition, they believe in dualism, they believe in creationism. And they often treat the Buddha as a Christ figure. It's the same thing in the Catholic Church when the Vatican presents official doctrines like that hell is not a place, or that people should accept evolution as a possible fact. Few of the people on the street believe that.

So to answer your question, I think religions develop in all sorts of ways, in response to science and in response to other religions or social changes. But honestly, I think most people have a kind of Stone Age approach to religion. In their hearts, they believe in the same kind of religion people believed in thousands of years ago.

You mention a 1944 study in which two psychologists made a movie involving circles, squares, and triangles. The shapes moved in a certain way, and viewers interpreted the shapes as bullies, victims, or heroes. You cite this as an example of how people are predisposed to "see intention where only artifice or accident exists." But couldn't someone argue just the opposite—that humans are able to correctly identify intentions where they do exist? After all, the researchers did in fact create the movie with those motives in mind, and the audience picked right up on this story.

That's right. It was no surprise what the people saw. You see a very sophisticated version of that in Walt Disney movies— Fantasia, for instance. A good animator can make objects come to life and give them personalities in films. And people are extraordinarily adept at picking them up. We're natural conspiracy theorists, hypersensitive to signs of intelligence. So when it's there, we find it.Unfortunately, we tend to overshoot the mark. For instance, people historically attribute intentions to the weather.

Or to natural catastrophes, especially when they happen one after another.

Exactly. Social psychologists have studied that for a long time. When events happen, people try to find meaning in them, especially when it's something awful like the hurricane: "It was God's will." For everything, you could tell a story—for 9/11 and everything else. Social psychologists study what's called the "just world" hypothesis. This is the hypothesis that people seem to hold quite strongly, that when bad things happen, people had it coming to them. It shows up in why rape victims are often blamed for their own crime. Often the first response is, "They shouldn't have been walking there." There's a sense of justice that we have.

How does this issue of intentionality relate to animals? Would a dog, for instance, be able to watch that same animation and find the same motives in the movements of the triangles and squares?

There are a lot of ways to study that. I'm working with two colleagues—Karen Wynn and Laurie Santos—on a series of studies to explore this. We're doing some of the same experiments we've done with babies on monkeys and looking to see how monkeys do. We know that they can handle complex social interactions within their groups. What's not as clear is the extent to which they are motivated by actual social understanding. For instance, there's a lot of debate as to whether other animals besides humans can deceive each other—not through camouflage or anything like that, but by intentionally doing something to trick somebody else. The jury is still out. And that's another difference between social understanding and physical understanding. You asked before about how we can know that these are separate. One answer is that all of these physical-object studies have been replicated with non-humans, and we get the same results with monkeys or dogs. But the social stuff may be unique to humans. What might be special about humans is our incredibly advanced social ability.

The study with the animated shapes also reminds me of that famous scene in American Beauty where the character shows a video of a plastic bag floating in the wind. He says, "That's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things," and he remembers feeling an "incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever." Based on your research, how would you analyze this scene?

Not all conspiracy theories are depressing. You can look at something and see intelligence behind it and be gratified by it. If I believe that everything in my life has a meaning, it makes me feel reassured about myself and the people I love. If it's a cold random world, the reassurance goes away.

Where, if anywhere, can we draw the line between the movement of a plastic bag and the experience of hiking through the Rocky Mountains on a beautiful day? When people go into nature, they don't generally feel that the rocks and the water are just cold and lifeless. They more often feel that the landscape is radiating something genuine and personal.

I think we have these transcendent feelings about the natural world, and it makes no sense for someone like me to say it's right or wrong. We experience some things as beautiful and awe-inspiring, and I have no beef with that. My troubles are when someone sees the Grand Canyon and not only finds it aesthetically inspiring but says, "Somebody must have built this." Just as when you see a beautiful painting, you infer the intelligence of the painter, when you see beauty in nature, you infer some divine artist.

That may bring us back to your point that within any given religion there are different levels of intellectual reasoning. There are religious people who can look at the Grand Canyon and say, "Yes, it was created by these elaborate scientific processes, but that just proves all the more how brilliant the creator must be." Do you think it's possible for people to have such subtle thinking that they don't have to choose between science and divinity?

I think it's better than that. Someone who has a scientific worldview can actually get more appreciation from nature than someone with a religious worldview. I don't want to say this in an offensive way, but religious explanations are typically very boring. They're uninspired and they end very quickly. When you look at the actual facts of how the Grand Canyon was formed, and you look at the actual nuances of Darwinian evolution, it's far more interesting, far more beautiful, than what you find in the Old Testament and the New Testament. So when it comes to appreciating things, I think scientists have an edge over religious people.

I'm interested in the difference between blind religious faith and firsthand mystical experience. There's a kind of epiphany that you see popping up in different cultures throughout history, regardless of whether people are religious or not. I'm thinking of Eugene Ionesco, the postmodern playwright. In his memoir, he describes a flash of insight that he calls "a certainty of being." It hit him one day while he was walking through a little French village. His body felt weightless, but he writes, "Neither flight nor anything else could give me greater euphoria than that of becoming aware that I was, once and for all, and that this was an irreversible thing, an eternal miracle." When you're talking in terms of a direct experience like that, is it really so different from the experience of hot or cold, or hunger or thirst?

That touches upon what I'm most interested in: our feelings of what we ourselves are. There are some philosophers who believe that the result of science is that there's no such thing as consciousness or no such thing as free will. I'm not one of them. There is nothing more irrefutable than that we experience ourselves as conscious, experiencing, acting beings. That's just one of the facts that we as scientists have to come to terms with. I'm not interested in getting rid of that sense of selfhood. I'm just interested in where it comes from. And I think it comes from the physical brain.

One could speculate that the emergence of a coherent self is, in some ways, a developmental accomplishment. This idea sometimes gets overblown, but I think that the experience of selfhood that an adult has is different, in interesting ways, from that of a three-year-old—and the three-year-old's experience is different, in interesting ways, from that of a six-month-old. People with language and culture construct a sort of narrative self.

One argument for the eternity of the soul is that life in a body is even harder to explain than life outside of one. The quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger wrote a long essay called "What Is Life?" in which he tried to understand how material objects can be alive and resist entropy. He concluded that the human being, the "I" or observer, must be something other than the body because the body goes through dramatic changes—childhood, puberty, the renewal of cells—while the identity inside the body is a continuum. Do you see this as a valid line of reasoning?

Schrödinger's observations are right on and the questions he's asking are the right ones. The hardest question in my field—maybe it's the hardest question ever—is how a mere physical object could give rise to an experience of selfhood. The mind-body problem, as it's called. Religious answers are deeply unsatisfactory. "It has a soul" is a common answer, but it doesn't go anywhere. But the problem is replacing it with something that makes sense to us.

Do you think science will succeed in that?

I think science is very far away from solving the fundamental problem of how physical objects give rise to experience and feeling and choice. On the other hand, I think we now know a hell of a lot about what's not the answer. So we know schizophrenia is not demonic possession. We know that memory is in the brain, not in the ether or spirit world. But we're very far from a solution to how a physical brain can give rise to mental life. Some people say we're never going to get there.

In your article, you tell a charming story about your six-year-old son, Max, who tells you, "You can make me go to bed but you can't make me go to sleep. It's my brain!" I can't help but wonder if he has given so much thought to his brain partly because he has you as a father—and maybe because he knows that talking about his brain is one sure way to lure you into letting him stay up later. How much do parents shape the very way that children, even infants, perceive the world of matter and the world of the mind?

Both of my kids are very interested in these issues and love to talk about them, probably in part because my wife and I love to talk about them, and they're kind of like me and they're kind of like my wife. So Max does get a lot from me. And if he was raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, or if he was raised Islamic or fundamentalist Christian, he would think differently. In that way, parents and culture do play a role.

On the other hand, there's one really interesting finding that comes up in all of this research on common sense dualism and creationism. And that's that children believe it more than their parents do. What goes on in society isn't a question of taking kids with no religious beliefs and pumping religious beliefs into them. Instead, kids start with a strong, powerful propensity to believe all of these things. And then what society does is focus it: "There is one God"—or, "There are five gods"—or, "Here's what happens to your soul. It goes to heaven." "It occupies another animal." "It resides in the spirit world." Society tells a story and focuses these beliefs, but kids start off with the foundations.

And then in some very interesting sub-societies, like my house, the parents don't believe in any of these things. I don't bully my kids into my way of thinking, but when we talk about it, they know my view. And they're free to make up their own minds. Actually if they're like most people, they'll probably end up a lot more religious than I am.

There does seem to be a certain age at which kids are very ready to just adore someone, whether it's Jesus or Krishna or the Lubavitcher Rebbe. They'll gaze at pictures of that person or deity, and when visitors come to the house, the kids will take them by the hand and try to get them to believe in it, too.

Kids who are raised in atheist houses often glom on to the religion of other kids. There are atheist parents who discover, to their horror, that their daughter has fallen in love with Jesus. And a lot of Jewish kids, at least for a phase, become a lot more religious than their parents.

Many sociologists are interested in why some religions do better than others. They often conclude that it's the orthodox religions that do very well, because they keep the kids locked up, metaphorically speaking. They have strong control over what the kids read and see and whom they meet. When a religion has porous boundaries, like Reform Judaism or most forms of Christianity, people often rebel and look for something stricter. They want something to satisfy their intuitive belief systems, and the sort of secularized versions of the religion often aren't enough for them.

In your article, you mention Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama as examples of very appealing religious leaders because they emphasize morality and universal brotherhood rather than intolerance or eternal damnation. But a religious person might insist that Martin Luther King's faith in humanity was possible only because of his faith in God, or that the Dalai Lama's ethics are based on his belief that actions reverberate throughout the universe. Is it really possible to separate morality from some kind of belief in forces beyond the physical?

I think people have a strong moral sense that, to some extent, is built in. Children don't need to be taught that some things are fair and others are not. Of course it gets complicated, and of course there are some aspects that have to be learned. But if you're splitting up cookies between kids, a two year old will have a sense of what's right and what's wrong.

What a really good, contemplative person can do is take religious texts and use them to construct appealing virtues. But a lot of times, I think religious texts can corrupt our natural sense of morality. Most religions, for example, given the times they were created, have bizarre views about sex roles and the place of homosexuals in society.

In America, though, it does seem that the people who are most motivated to go out and work in soup kitchens or take care of flood victims are often members of a church group. It's difficult to inspire and mobilize people without something as magnetic as religion.

Here's a way to look at it. You're right that you find all things in religion. During the civil-rights movement, a lot of people were able to effect change by working through their churches. And that's certainly still true today. On the other hand, most of the world's current fanatical movements evolved from religions. So even though it's the religious people who are doing the most right now to help the victims of the hurricane, there are also religious people who are involved in abortion-clinic bombings.

The role of religion and morality is a complicated one. What religion often does is give people a language to express their moral views. But people pick and choose. So it can be a very useful tool—people who care about morality can get together under the rubric of religion and do good things. People can also go through the Bible and use it to justify all sorts of immoral things. A lot of people think gay marriage is terrible, but they won't say, "I think it's terrible because I hate gay people." What they'll say is, "I think it's terrible because it says so in the Bible." And they'll quote you chapter and verse. There are a lot of arguments against slavery in the Bible. There are a lot of arguments for slavery in the Bible. Religion provides a language, but the decision of what to say with it relies on other factors.

And then there's the argument that Sam Harris makes in his bookThe End of Faith, that religions are standing in the way of a more authentic form of spirituality. He advocates being spiritual outside the context of these set religions. How do you feel about that notion?

I tend to be rather crabby about this. When people tell me how spiritual they are, I roll my eyes.

Well, it's one of those words that's been overused to the point of self-parody.

People typically use it to tell you how wonderful they are. I would like to move away from such notions and towards more secular virtues such as intelligence and empathy and kindness and good sense. If it comes to someone deciding how to allocate money in society or how to treat animals or whether to allow gay marriage, I'd rather people give up both religion and spirituality and use their common sense and moral intuition. So I'm probably even more skeptical than Sam Harris.

You mention toward the end of your article that the Dalai Lama is becoming involved in neuroscience. I know that there's been a lot of research on Transcendental Meditation as well. The film director David Lynch is funding a study on TM at American University. Do you think there's any value in analyzing what happens to people's brains while they're having a certain inner experience?

I think it's extremely interesting. And there actually is good scientific work on meditation, suggesting that this has benefits for creating happiness. There's a very short list of things that people can do to make themselves happier. Making more money doesn't tend to make you happier unless you're living in poverty. But meditation does. That and getting married.

The Dalai Lama is quite an interesting case. He was invited to give a talk at a major neuroscience conference, and it's proven to be quite controversial. Part of the issue is that although he puts himself forth as a representative of science, he defends other views that are quite supernatural.

Do you think people are afraid that this might open the door to research on prayer and religious practices?

Meditative practices and how they work is a straightforward, interesting psychological question. People have been meditating for a very long time, and there's no reason that neuroscientists shouldn't study the effects of it. It could have real, practical benefits for making our lives better.

I know your graduate students are doing some intriguing research. Can you tell me about the topics they've been investigating?

Sure. I have a first-year graduate student named Izzat Jarudi who is asking the question, "Why do we find certain interventions, such as steroids, to be morally wrong?" The main idea here is that our moral intuition doesn't have to do with the bad consequences of this intervention; it has to do with its perceived unnaturalness. If I could tell you about some herbs that you could take that would make you much stronger, our prediction is that this would not be seen as being as bad as steroids. People used ginkgo biloba as an antidepressant for a while, before they found out it had very bad side effects. They did it because it was herbal, and so they saw it as intrinsically better than drugs like Prozac. So Izzat is interested in the idea that it's morally okay for people to use natural things and not okay to use unnatural products, independent of the effects.

I have another student named Deena Skolnick who is interested in young children and their views about fictional characters. The idea is that you believe that Batman and Robin are fictional, and so do young children. You believe that Spiderman and Mary Jane are fictional, and so do young children. But what do you think the relationship between Batman and Robin and Spiderman and Mary Jane is? As an adult, you think they're separate. She's asking whether children think they're separate also, and she's finding that they do. The youngest children understand that Batman can touch Robin, but he can't make contact with Harry Potter. Harry Potter is as far away from Batman as you are. So she's doing work on what she calls the cosmology of fictional worlds.

I've read that you and your students have also been researching art—trying to understand, for instance, what distinguishes an artwork from an ordinary object or from a forgery.

One argument that art critics have made for a long time is that what distinguishes art from non-art is the intention underlying it. This doesn't matter so much when you look at a Rembrandt. But it matters when you look at modern art, like the work of Marcel Duchamp, which gets to be art just by virtue of the intent of its creator. This sort of intuition seems to be shared by young children.You can show a two year old some paint on a canvas. In one case, paint was spilled on it. In another case, the two-year-old watches as somebody carefully works on it. The two paintings can look the same, but what matters is that only the second was created through an act of will. This is the one that two-year-olds will see as art.

So what sets apart a Monet or a Van Gogh from other lesser artists?

Now that's something I don't know much about. I'm just looking into what's art and what isn't. The difference between mediocre art and great art is a wonderful question. And I have nothing to say on it.