DOCSLIB.ORG

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Frank C. Keil, Joshua Goodstein, Elizabeth Rawson, and Jeremy R. Gray Abstract & Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to gener- vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience in- ate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific formation was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. people’s abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naı¨ve that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience infor- adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience ex- mation were more satisfying than explanations without. The perts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good nonexperts’ judgments of bad explanations, masking other- explanation vs. bad explanation) Â 2 (without neuroscience wise salient problems in these explanations. & INTRODUCTION (Lombrozo & Carey, 2006; Kelemen, 1999). People also Although it is hardly mysterious that members of the tend to rate longer explanations as more similar to ex- public should find psychological research fascinating, perts’ explanations (Kikas, 2003), fail to recognize circu- this fascination seems particularly acute for findings that larity (Rips, 2002), and are quite unaware of the limits were obtained using a neuropsychological measure. In- of their own abilities to explain a variety of phenomena deed, one can hardly open a newspaper’s science sec- (Rozenblit & Keil, 2002). In general, people often believe tion without seeing a report on a neuroscience discovery explanations because they find them intuitively satisfying, or on a new application of neuroscience findings to eco- not because they are accurate (Trout, 2002). nomics, politics, or law. Research on nonneural cogni- In line with this body of research, we propose that tive psychology does not seem to pique the public’s people often find neuroscience information alluring be- interest in the same way, even though the two fields are cause it interferes with their abilities to judge the quality concerned with similar questions. of the psychological explanations that contain this infor- The current study investigates one possible reason why mation. The presence of neuroscience information may members of the public find cognitive neuroscience so be seen as a strong marker of a good explanation, re- particularly alluring. To do so, we rely on one of the gardless of the actual status of that information within functions of neuroscience information in the field of psy- the explanation. That is, something about seeing neu- chology: providing explanations. Because articles in both roscience information may encourage people to believe the popular press and scientific journals often focus on they have received a scientific explanation when they how neuroscientific findings can help to explain human have not. People may therefore uncritically accept any behavior, people’s fascination with cognitive neuroscience explanation containing neuroscience information, even can be redescribed as people’s fascination with explana- in cases when the neuroscience information is irrelevant tions involving a neuropsychological component. to the logic of the explanation. However, previous research has shown that people To test this hypothesis, we examined people’s judg- have difficulty reasoning about explanations (for reviews, ments of explanations that either do or do not contain see Keil, 2006; Lombrozo, 2006). For instance, people can neuroscience information, but that otherwise do not dif- be swayed by teleological explanations when these are not fer in content or logic. All three studies reported here warranted, as in cases where a nonteleological process, used a 2 (explanation type: good vs. bad) Â 2(neurosci- such as natural selection or erosion, is actually implicated ence: without vs. with) design. This allowed us to see both people’s baseline abilities to distinguish good psy- chological explanations from bad psychological explana- Yale University tions as well as any influence of neuroscience information D 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20:3, pp. 470–477 on this ability. If logically irrelevant neuroscience infor- circular restatements of the phenomenon, hence, not mation affects people’s judgments of explanations, this explanatory (see Table 1 for a sample item). would suggest that people’s fascination with neuropsy- For the With Neuroscience conditions, we added neu- chological explanations may stem from an inability or roscience information to the good and bad explanations unwillingness to critically consider the role that neurosci- from the Without Neuroscience conditions. The added ence information plays in these explanations. neuroscience information had three important features: (1) It always specified that the area of activation seen in the study was an area already known to be involved in tasks of this type, circumventing the interpretation that EXPERIMENT 1 the neuroscience information added value to the expla- Methods nation by localizing the phenomenon. (2) It was always Subjects identical or nearly identical in the good explanation and the bad explanation for a given phenomenon. Any There were 81 participants in the study (42 women, general effect of neuroscience information on judgment 37 men, 2 unreported; mean age = 20.1 years, SD = should thus be seen equally for good explanations and 4.2 years, range = 18–48 years, based on 71 reported bad explanations. Additionally, any differences that may ages). We randomly assigned 40 subjects to the With- occur between the good explanation and bad explana- out Neuroscience condition and 41 to the With Neuro- tion conditions would be highly unlikely to be due to science condition. Subjects thus saw explanations that any details of the neuroscience information itself. (3) either always did or always did not contain neuroscience Most importantly, in no case did the neuroscience information. We used this between-subjects design to information alter the underlying logic of the explanation prevent subjects from directly comparing explanations itself. This allowed us to test the effect of neuroscience that did and did not contain neuroscience, providing a information on the task of evaluating explanations, stronger test of our hypothesis. independent of any value added by such information.1 Before the study began, three experienced cognitive neuroscientists confirmed that the neuroscience infor- Materials mation did not add value to the explanations. We wrote descriptions of 18 psychological phenomena (e.g., mutual exclusivity, attentional blink) that were meant Procedure to be accessible to a reader untrained in psychology or neuroscience. For each of these items, we created two Subjects were told that they would be rating explana- types of explanations, good and bad, neither of which tions of scientific phenomena, that the studies they contained neuroscience. The good explanations in most would read about were considered solid, replicable re- cases were the genuine explanations that the researchers search, and that the explanations they would read were gave for each phenomenon. The bad explanations were not necessarily the real explanations for the phenomena. Table 1. Sample Item Good Explanation Bad Explanation Without Neuroscience The researchers claim that this ‘‘curse’’ happens The researchers claim that this ‘‘curse’’ happens because subjects have trouble switching their because subjects make more mistakes when point of view to consider what someone else they have to judge the knowledge of others. might know, mistakenly projecting their own People are much better at judging what they knowledge onto others. themselves know. With Neuroscience Brain scans indicate that this ‘‘curse’’ happens Brain scans indicate that this ‘‘curse’’ happens because of the frontal lobe brain circuitry because of the frontal lobe brain circuitry known to be involved in self-knowledge. known to be involved in self-knowledge. Subjects have trouble switching their point of Subjects make more mistakes when they have view to consider what someone else might to judge the knowledge of others. People are know, mistakenly projecting their own much better at judging what they themselves knowledge onto others. know. Researchers created a list of facts that about 50% of people knew. Subjects in this experiment read the list of facts and had to say which ones they knew. They then had to judge what percentage of other people would know those facts. Researchers found that the subjects responded differently about other people’s knowledge of a fact when the subjects themselves knew that fact. If the subjects did know a fact, they said that an inaccurately large percentage of others would know it, too. For example, if a subject already knew that Hartford was the capital of Connecticut, that subject might say that 80% of people would know this, even though the correct answer is 50%. The researchers call this finding ‘‘the curse of knowledge.’’ The neuroscience information
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Readingsample
    Interdisciplinary Anthropology Continuing Evolution of Man Bearbeitet von Wolfgang Welsch, Wolf Singer, André Wunder 1. Auflage 2011. Buch. xii, 174 S. Hardcover ISBN 978 3 642 11667 4 Format (B x L): 15,5 x 23,5 cm Gewicht: 499 g Weitere Fachgebiete > Chemie, Biowissenschaften, Agrarwissenschaften > Biowissenschaften allgemein > Evolutionsbiologie Zu Inhaltsverzeichnis schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, eBooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte. Intrinsic Multiperspectivity: Conceptual Forms and the Functional Architecture of the Perceptual System Rainer Mausfeld Abstract It is a characteristic feature of our mental make-up that the same percep- tual input situation can simultaneously elicit conflicting mental perspectives. This ability pervades our perceptual and cognitive domains. Striking examples are the dual character of pictures in picture perception, pretend play, or the ability to employ metaphors and allegories. I argue that traditional approaches, beyond being inadequate on principle grounds, are theoretically ill equipped to deal with these achievements. I then outline a theoretical perspective that has emerged from a theoretical convergence of perceptual psychology, ethology, linguistics, and
    [Show full text]
  • Munton Phil Perspectives 2
    The Eye’s Mind: Perceptual Process and Epistemic Norms Jessie Munton Abstract: Philosophers have tended to formulate theories of perceptual justification independently of psychological investigation into perceptual functioning. Nevertheless, work in perceptual epistemology often conceals an implicit commitment to a normative view of what kinds of processing maximise the epistemic power of a perceptual experience, that is, its capacity to justify belief. This implicit commitment is to a set of “minimalist” norms, which treat sensory stimulation as the ultimate locus of epistemic power, and consequently set value on the purity of sensory signal and passivity of perceptual processing. These norms fit poorly with our best scientific models of perception, which draw out the ways in which it can be understood as akin to a hypothesis. Focusing on visual perception in particular, I argue that appreciating how it plays the role of a hypothesis within the visual system, whilst also constituting a form of evidence at the person level, gives us reason to reject these minimalist norms for perceptual processing.1 0. Introduction Visual experience can justify belief. Visual experience is also the result of a set of psychological processes. What is the significance of the latter set of facts for the former capacity? What role do psychological processes play in determining the epistemic value, or power, of a perceptual experience?2 According to one, influential train of thought in philosophy, the answer is, superficially at least, “none”. For the most part, epistemic norms have been formulated in isolation from psychological inquiry into perception. Philosophers have often granted perceptual experience an exceptional epistemic role: it puts us in immediate contact with the world around us, and can provide a foundational level of justification for certain basic beliefs, on which we can ground, via inference, a web of more complex beliefs.
    [Show full text]
  • Notions Such As 'Truth' Or 'Correspondence to the Objective World' Play No Role in Explanatory Accounts of Perception
    Mausfeld, R. (2015). Notions such as ‘truth’ or ‘correspondence to the objective world’ play no role in ex- planatory accounts of perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , DOI: 10.3758/s13423-014-0763-6 Notions such as ‘truth’ or ‘correspondence to the objective world’ play no role in explanatory accounts of perception Rainer Mausfeld University of Kiel Abstract. Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash (2015) intend to show that perceptions are evolutionarily tuned to fitness rather than to truth. I argue, partly in accordance with their objective, that issues of ‘truth’ or ‘veridicality’ have no place in explanatory accounts of perception theory, and rather belong to either ordinary discourse or to philosophy. I regard, however, their general presumption that the evolutionary development of core achievements of the human perceptual system would be primarily determined by aspects of fitness and adaption as unwarranted in light of the evidence available. In our ordinary intuitions about perception, we are convinced that our perceptual apparatus by and large conveys to us a basically ‘truthful’ account of the external world. We are apparently biologi- cally endowed with a predisposition to take certain expressions generated by our perceptual capaci- ties for ‘things in the objective world’. This propensity constitutes a kind of naïve realism that is deeply built-in into our mental make-up (cf. Mausfeld, 2010a). Although naïve realism already foun- ders in the face of most elementary scientific facts, say about the properties of our sense organs, it intellectually expresses some of our deepest convictions about the mental activity of perceiving, namely, being in direct touch with a mind-independent world.
    [Show full text]
  • Das Bedeutsamkeitsproblem in Der Statistik
    Das Bedeutsamkeitsproblem in der Statistik Reinhard Niederée und Rainer Mausfeld Im letzten Kapitel (Niederée & Mausfeld, in diesem Band), das dem Thema Ska- lenniveau, Invarianz und „Bedeutsamkeit“ gewidmet war, haben wir uns im we- sentlichen mit der Rolle von skalenniveaubezogenen Invarianzkriterien für numeri- sche Einzelfallaussagen und gesetzesartige Aussagen befaßt. Dabei haben wir zu zei- gen versucht, daß solche Kriterien nicht als aprioristische Bedeutsamkeitspostulate mißverstanden werden dürfen, daß ihnen aber dennoch eine fruchtbare substanzwis- senschaftliche Rolle zukommen kann. In diesem Kapitel wollen wir uns mit verwand- ten Fragen im Bereich der angewandten Statistik befassen. Dabei werden wir die einschlägigen, im letzten Kapitel besprochenen Konzepte als bekannt voraussetzen (vgl. insbesondere die Abschnitte zum Skalenniveau und zu „naiven“ Invarianzkon- zepten). 1 Stevens’ Bedeutsamkeitskonzeption und die Folgen Tatsächlich hatte Stevens (z.B. 1946, 1951) primär Probleme der angewandten Stati- stik im Sinn, als er sein einflußreiches skalenniveaubezogenes Bedeutsamkeitskonzept vorschlug. Konzepte der sog. statistischen Bedeutsamkeit oder Zulässigkeit, welche in der Stevensschen Tradition stehen, finden sich bis heute in einer Vielzahl von einführenden Texten zur angewandten Statistik und zum experimentellen Design. Dabei werden für ein „gegebenes“ Skalenniveau der betrachteten Variablen nur sol- che statistischen Kennwerte (Statistiken) als „bedeutsam“ oder „zulässig“ eingestuft, welche gewisse Invarianzkriterien
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    1 Introduction: PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE OF VISUAL PERCEPTION AND COGNITION Consider your visual experience. In that experience, mind and world meet. The world is presented to you with its shapes, colors, and textures: a green expanse with moving blobs on it; or a whitish grey ribbon with shaped volumes of color moving at great speed. The mind responds by categorizing the objects and anticipating their behavior: here is a park with people playing volleyball, and someone is about to spike the ball; there is a busy highway as you navigate your vehicle at high speed, concerned that the car on the left is weaving a bit. Form, color, and meaning are all present at once in vision, and the objects of other senses usually are experienced as located within this visual world. The world we inhabit, the one in which we live, move, and breathe, is primarily a visual world. For this reason, vision is the most thoroughly studied of the human senses. From antiquity, the disciplines of philosophy and psychology have both given special attention to vision. Indeed, the psychology of perception is the centerpiece of psychological science. Perusing a textbook such as psychologist Stephen Palmer’s Vision Science reveals a broad range of topics, from sensory receptors and the retinal image, to the perception of color, spatial structures, motion, and events, and on to cognitive aspects of perception including object perception, conceptualization, attention, visual memory, imagery, and consciousness. These topic areas are treated experimentally and the phenomena are subject to explicit models framed within recognized theoretical traditions. Although philosophers sometimes have disparaged the notion of psychological science, in this case there can be no question of the just application of the honorific ‘‘science.’’ Sensory perception was the first topical area within psychology to which mathematics was applied, in ancient, medieval, and early modern optical 2 introduction writings (Ch.
    [Show full text]
  • Colour Within an Internalist Framework: the Role of 'Colour' in the Structure of the Perceptual System
    to appear in: Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen (eds.). Color Ontology and Color Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Colour within an internalist framework: The role of ‘colour’ in the structure of the perceptual system Rainer Mausfeld Colour is, according to prevailing orthodoxy in perceptual psychology, a kind of autonomous and unitary attribute. It is regarded as unitary or homogeneous by assuming that its core properties do not depend on the type of ‘perceptual object’ to which it pertains and that ‘colour per se’ constitutes a natural attribute in the functional architecture of the perceptual system. It is regarded as autonomous by assuming that it can be studied in isolation of other perceptual attributes. These assumptions also provide the pillars for the technical field of colorimetry, and have proved very fruitful for neurophysiological investigations into peripheral colour coding. They also have become, in a technology-driven cultural process of abstraction, part of our common-sense conception of colour. With respect to perception theory, however, both assumptions are grossly inadequate, on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Classical authors, such as David Katz, Karl Bühler, Adhémar Gelb, Ludwig Kardos or Kurt Koffka, were keenly aware of this and insisted that enquiries into colour perception cannot be divorced from general enquiries into the structure of the conceptual forms underlying perception. All the same, the idea of an internal homogeneous and autonomous attribute of ‘colour per se’, mostly taken not as an empirical hypothesis but as a kind of truism, became a guiding idea in perceptual psychology. Here, it has impeded the identification of relevant theoretical issues and consequently has become detrimental for the development of explanatory frameworks for the role of ‘colour’ within the structure of our perceptual system.
    [Show full text]
  • The Scrambling Theorem: a Simple Proof of the Logical Possibility of Spectrum Inversion
    Consciousness and Cognition Consciousness and Cognition 15 (2006) 31–45 www.elsevier.com/locate/concog The scrambling theorem: A simple proof of the logical possibility of spectrum inversion Donald D. Hoffman * Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA Received 20 February 2005 Available online 2 August 2005 Abstract The possibility of spectrum inversion has been debated since it was raised by Locke (1690/1979) and is still discussed because of its implications for functionalist theories of conscious experience (e.g., Palmer, 1999). This paper provides a mathematical formulation of the question of spectrum inversion and proves that such inversions, and indeed bijective scramblings of color in general, are logically possible. Symmetries in the structure of color space are, for purposes of the proof, irrelevant. The proof entails that conscious experiences are not identical with functional relations. It leaves open the empirical possibility that function- al relations might, at least in part, be causally responsible for generating conscious experiences. Function- alists can propose causal accounts that meet the normal standards for scientific theories, including numerical precision and novel prediction; they cannot, however, claim that, because functional relationships and conscious experiences are identical, any attempt to construct such causal theories entails a category error. Ó 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Color; Empirical possibility; Locke; Logical possibility; Nonreductive functionalism; Qualia; Reductive functionalism; Representationalism; Spectrum inversion; Supervenience * Fax: +1 949 824 2307. E-mail address: ddhoff@uci.edu. 1053-8100/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2005.06.002 32 D.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Color Realism and Color Science
    BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2003) 26, 3–64 Printed in the United States of America Color realism and color science Alex Byrne Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 [email protected] mit.edu/abyrne/www David R. Hilbert Department of Philosophy and Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607 [email protected] www.uic.edu/~hilbert/ Abstract: The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically, types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are “subjective” or “in the mind.” The article has two other purposes: First, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate. The first part explains the problem of color realism and makes some useful distinctions. These distinctions are then used to expose various confusions that often prevent people from seeing that the issues are genuine and difficult, and that the problem of color realism ought to be of interest to anyone working in the field of color science. The second part explains the various leading answers to the prob- lem of color realism, and (briefly) argues that all views other than our own have serious difficulties or are unmotivated.
    [Show full text]
  • NEOLIBERAL INDOCTRINATION Interview with Prof
    NEOLIBERAL INDOCTRINATION Interview with Prof. Rainer Mausfeld (2016) Neoliberalism tells the poor and weak that they are responsible for their misery.. It does its utmost so the true extent of social poverty barely reaches the public, that the public health system despite ever greater spending becomes more inhuman, that social work erodes and hardly anyone does anything against this, that a "re-feudalization bomb" rages in the country and investors seek privatizing the public education system. Jens Wernicke spoke with the perception- and cognition-researcher Rainer Mausfeld on the question how people are atomized and obscured by means of psycho-techniques that make resistance against this inhuman ideology impossible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [This interview was published on January 18, 2016 and has been translated from the German. Rainer Mausfeld is a psychology professor and perception- and cognition researcher.] NEOLIBERALISM IS A PHENOMENON AS A SOCIAL IDEOLOGY Neoliberalism tells the poor and weak that they are responsible for their misery. It does its utmost so the true extent of social poverty barely reaches the public, that the public health system despite ever greater spending becomes more inhuman, that social work erodes and hardly anyone does anything against this, that a “re-feudalization bomb” rages in the country and investors seek privatizing the public education system. Jens Wernicke spoke with the perception- and cognition-researcher Rainer Mausfeld on the question how people are atomized and obscured by means of psycho-techniques that make resistance against this inhuman ideology impossible. Mr. Mausfeld, you recently and unexpectedly gained a little fame as a perception- and cognition researcher when your lecture “Why are the Lambs Silent?” suddenly registered an enormous demand on YouTube.
    [Show full text]
  • Perceptual Transparency in Neon Colour Spreading Displays
    Perceptual transparency in neon colour spreading displays Vebj¿rn Ekroll¤ and Franz Fauly Institut fÄur Psychologie der Christian-Albrechts-UniversitÄat zu Kiel Olshausenstr. 40, 24118 Kiel, Germany To appear in Perception & Psychophysics, 2002 This is a preprint and may di®er from the published version March 7, 2002 ¤E-mail: [email protected], Phone: +49(0)431-8807534 yE-mail: ®[email protected], Phone: +49(0)431-8807530 Abstract In neon colour spreading displays, both a colour illusion and per- ceptual transparency can be seen. In the this study we investigated the color conditions for the perception of transparency in such displays. It was found that the data are very well accounted for by a general- ization of Metelli's (1970) episcotister model of balanced perceptual transparency to tristimulus values. This additive model correctly pre- dicted which combinations of colours lead to optimal impressions of transparency. Colour combinations deviating slightly from the addi- tive model also looked transparent, but less convincingly so. 1 1 Introduction The phenomenon of neon colour spreading was ¯rst noticed by Varin (1971) and van Tuijl (1975). This illusion owes its name to the apparent di®usion of colour, which can be seen in ¯gure 1. This particular con¯guration consists of a black and blue grid on a `physically white' background. Despite this fact the background close to the blue parts of the grid looks bluish. Other interesting phenomenal facts, pertaining to this illusion (see ¯gure 1), are that the embedded part seems to be `desaturated' compared to the same part viewed in isolation, and that one has the (sometimes rather vague) im- pression of a transparent layer (Bressan, Mingolla, Spillmann, & Watanabe, 1997; Varin, 1971) covering the region of the subjective colour spread.
    [Show full text]
  • Selective Semantic Memory Retrieval: Electrophysiological Correlates of Interference
    Selective semantic memory retrieval: Electrophysiological correlates of interference Hellerstedt, Robin; Johansson, Mikael 2012 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Hellerstedt, R., & Johansson, M. (2012). Selective semantic memory retrieval: Electrophysiological correlates of interference. Abstract from TeaP 2012 (Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen), Mannheim, Germany. http://www.teap.de/index.php/teap2012/mannheim Total number of authors: 2 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 CONTENTS GENERAL INFORMATION .........................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Foreign Rights List Fall 2018
    Foreign Rights List Fall 2018 Foreign Rights Contact: Ruediger Gruenhagen Email: [email protected] Phone: +49 (0) 69 24 750 18-10 – Fax: +49 (0) 69 24 750 18-20 Westend Verlag GmbH, Neue Kraeme 28, 60311 Frankfurt, Germany Rainer Mausfeld Rainer Mausfeld is professor at the University of Kiel. Before his retirement, he was the chair of the faculty for perception, and cog- nition studies. He writes on neoliberal ideology, the deconstruction of democracy into an authoritarian surveillance state, and psycho- logical techniques of opinion. With his lectures (such as “How are democracies, and opinions being guided”, and “The power elites fear of the people”) he reaches hundred thousands of listeners. © privat Original Title: Silence of the Lambs Warum schweigen die Lämmer? Wie How the power elite and neoliberal- Elitendemokratie und Neoliberalis- mus unsere Gesellschaft und unsere ism destroy our society Lebensgrundlagen zerstören Original language: German Over the past decades, democracy has been un- Publication in October 2018 304 pages dermined in an unparalleled fashion. Democracy has been replaced by the illusion of democracy; the Including many llustrations public debate has been replaced by an apparatus YouTube: 2 million visits of opinion, and irritation management, and the ideal of the responsible citizen has been replaced by the neoliberal ideal of the politically apathetic WORLD RIGHTS AVAILABLE consumer. Important political decisions are being made by economic and political groups with no democratic legitimation or accountability whatso- ever. The destructive social, ecological, and psy- chological effects of this reign of the elites increas- ingly endangers our society, and the fundaments of our life.
    [Show full text]