Over at the eminently useful blog consortium ScienceBlogs, Chris of the Mixing Memory blog has begun reviewing George Lakoff’s The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. Lakoff’s fundamental argument (in this and earlier books) is that liberals continue to rely on a rational conceptualisation of mind and try to sway voters through logical argument, whereas conservatives succeed by appealing to values and emotion. While there is plenty of evidence to support the general notion that humans are not as rational as we like to think and that affect can play a substantial role in shaping our judgments and attitudes, Chris’s review is doing a good job of identifying the areas where Lakoff drifts into pseudoscience and rampant generalisations. The parts of the review are available at these links:
NB: I will continue updating this post with links to the other parts of the review as they appear.
