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If Mozart had Died at Your Age: Psychologic Versus Statistical Interence
Author(s) -
Lebow Richard Ned
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2006.00466.x
Subject(s) - counterfactual thinking , mozart , credibility , the holocaust , premise , psychology , character (mathematics) , world war ii , politics , attractiveness , social psychology , psychoanalysis , aesthetics , literature , law , philosophy , political science , epistemology , art , geometry , mathematics
In an alternative world, Mozart lived to 65 and, as a result, neither World War nor the Holocaust happened. Two contemporary Germans in this world debate the implications of the counterfactual of Mozart dying young and cannot begin to conceive of the horrors of our twentieth century. A imaginary critic with a structural orientation reviews the story and challenges its premise. He denies that artistic changes could have far‐reaching political implications and uses the laws of probability to show the vanishingly low likelihood of the alternate future described by the main character of the story. The author responds with a defense of his counterfactual as an exercise in psychologic, where credibility is achieved through vividness.