Robert A. Burton, M.D., "On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not"

You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001—you know these things, well, because you just do.

In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.

Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know. Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.


Contents

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Preface 1 The Feeling of Knowing 2 How Do We Know What We Know?  Out of Sight Is Not Out of Mind  The Challenger Study  Cognitive Dissonance   A Scientist Contemplates Creationism   A Patient Confronts the Placebo Effect   Cotard's Syndrome   It May Be Right, But It's Not Right 3 Conviction Isn't a Choice  Neurotheology  Voices from the Limbic System   Déjà Vu and Feelings of Familiarity   Jamais Vu and Other "Feelings of Strangeness"   Strangely Familiar—a Duet of Opposites 4 The Classification of Mental States 5 Neural Networks 6 Modularity and Emergence  Organizing Complexity   Modules   The Hierarchical Arrangement of Sensory Data   Emergence  Synesthesia  Private Islands 7 When Does a Thought Begin?  Timing, or the Chicken and the Newly Hatched Idea   Subjective Backward Projection of Time   "Now" You See It, "Now" You Don't   Color Phi 8 Perceptual Thoughts: A Further Clarification  Episodic Versus Semantic Memory   "I Witness" Accuracy 9 The Pleasure of Your Thoughts  The Pleasure Principle  I Can't Go On, I Must Go On  The Big What-if  Double-Edged Single-Mindedness 10 Genes and Thought  Alice in Genetic Wonderland, or Through Hyperbole's Looking Glass  Why I Can't Play Poker 11 Sensational Thoughts  Intuition and Gut Feelings Are Unconscious Thoughts Plus the Feeling of Knowing 12 The Twin Pillars of Certainty: Reason and Objectivity  Abandoning the Idea of Rationality Is Unthinkable  Popular Psychology and the Myth of the Rational Mind  Complementary and Alternative Medicine 13 Faith  Welcome to the F Word  Tolstoy and the Biology of Despair  Caution: Deconstruction Zone Ahead  A Practical Suggestion? 14 Mind Speculations  The Origin of the Universe or Cosmology Versus Edges and Borders  Mind-Body Dualism and the Sense of Self 15 Final Thoughts  A Brief Recap  Some Ideas Are More Equal Than Others  The Juggling Act Notes Acknowledgments Index

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Tags: Science, Neuroscience, Psychology, Religion, Philosophy, Reasoning, CriticalThinking

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