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.

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Preface  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  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  Organizing Complexity   Modules   The Hierarchical Arrangement of Sensory Data   Emergence  Synesthesia  Private Islands  Timing, or the Chicken and the Newly Hatched Idea   Subjective Backward Projection of Time   "Now" You See It, "Now" You Don't   Color Phi  Episodic Versus Semantic Memory   "I Witness" Accuracy  The Pleasure Principle  I Can't Go On, I Must Go On  The Big What-if  Double-Edged Single-Mindedness  Alice in Genetic Wonderland, or Through Hyperbole's Looking Glass  Why I Can't Play Poker  Intuition and Gut Feelings Are Unconscious Thoughts Plus the Feeling of Knowing  Abandoning the Idea of Rationality Is Unthinkable  Popular Psychology and the Myth of the Rational Mind  Complementary and Alternative Medicine  Welcome to the F Word  Tolstoy and the Biology of Despair  Caution: Deconstruction Zone Ahead  A Practical Suggestion?  The Origin of the Universe or Cosmology Versus Edges and Borders  Mind-Body Dualism and the Sense of Self  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

M. Neil Browne & Stuart M. Keeley, "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking (8th Edition)" Richard Dawkins, "The God Delusion"