The philosopher Colin McGinn ((I always enjoy McGinn’s work, although I frequently disagree with him. However I think his CD-based course of lectures “Eternal Questions, Timeless Approaches” is the best introduction to philosophy that’s available today.)) has a a new book coming out on the subject of psychological manipulation. I’m going to be interested to see how he distinguishes between teaching and what he’s calling “Mindfucking”. In his blog, he talks about “rationality” as a way of distinguishing the two, but I’m not sure that this stands up to scrutiny….