One of the mistakes of the Enlightenment view of humanity is that we are essentially rational — I don’t like that being a mistake since I like to think I’m very rational and persuaded only by facts and reason. But I have to admit the facts tell me it ain’t so. Trying to recall those brain experiments where they demonstrated that people gave rational explanations for their choices that the experimenter could see were nothing more than confabulations. Will try to track down and post some of the details here.
But meanwhile, a journalist I like, Mark Colvin, has prepared a nifty article about more facts coming out of recent research: it’s about Professor of Psychology, Drew Westen‘s new book, The Political Brain. Check out the article here.
Looks like it is something, in part at least, of a more researched basis for Lakoff‘s Don’t Think of an Elephant.