I loved this book it. It starts off

Goering was an obsessive art collector and had already plundered much of Europe. But he was a huge fan of Vermeer, and this was the acquisition that he was most proud of.

a forgery, by disapointing Hermann Goering on his deathbed, and then goes on to explain how a collector was able to purchase Napoléon’s penis

it was (severed by the priest who had administered last rites to him.)

before going onto the market.

But really it makes you doubt that objects have any essence aside from what we assign them.

This theory of pleasure is an extension of one of the most interesting ideas in the cognitive sciences, which is that people naturally assume that things in the world—including other people—have invisible essences that make them what they are.

( )

Essentialism, biology, natural selection. Could have probably just read the introduction and been done with it. Loaded with references to a lot of obvious-seeming studies. ( )

"[...] people naturally assume that things in the world - including other people - have invisible essences that make them what they are. Experimental psychologists have argued that this essentialist perspective underlies our understanding of the physical and social worlds, and developmental and cross-cultural psychologists have propposed that it is instinctive and universal. We are natural-born essentialists. (p xii)" Evolution moulded us this way, and our essentialism determines much of how we experience pleasure from food (how old we believe a wine to be), sex, art (the real painting, not a fake); even if many pleasures evolved as by-products. Maybe, but much essentialism still seem quite silly. It was interesting to learn about an experiment by McClure et. al (2004) which showed that difference areas in the brain lighted up in fMRI scans when people knew as opposed to did not know whether they drank Coke or Pepsi. ( )

It was an enjoyable read with lots of interesting anecdotes, but there wasn't much content that didn't seem obvious.

"By distorting experience, beliefs, including essentialist beliefs, garner support for themselves, which is one reason why it is so hard to change our minds about anything." ( )

This a book to stimulate curiosity, not to answer it. Bloom presents several theories on how pleasure works, most of which revolve around the idea that, as humans, we believe that everything has an invisible, immeasurable essence, and that when our perception of that essence matches up with something desirable, we want it. Well, I disagree with several particulars, but it's an interesting idea. Maybe not the end-all, be-all of pleasure, but certainly interesting. ( )