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On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not By Robert Burton ( St. Martin's Press )
Release Date: 2008-02-05
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List Price: $24.95
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Product Description
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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Brilliant neurological analysis of current social problem ( rbrill11 )
"It's not what ya don't know that causes most problems. It's what ya know for sure that just ain't so." Humorist and aphorist Josh Billings warned us a Century and-a-half ago about the danger of determined, intransigent certainty in human affairs.
With this critical book, neuroscientist and neurologist Dr. Burton has taken a bite into a most perplexing problem of why there is so much human conflict and intolerance in the world. Yet this book so tightly focuses on "certainty" without relating his neuroscience investigation to the origins of mankind's tendencies toward "intolerance". He addresses with passion and intellect how our brain can lead us to engage in arbitrary, misleading rhetoric and actions despite our being an "enlightened" people.
My interest in the subject of this book is quite pragmatic: I develop education programs on brain function literacy for the general public - primarily pre-teens in grades 4-6 and for seniors. We must start using neuroscience to help teach coping skills that help us avoid harming others and ourselves. Emotional Honesty & Self-Acceptance In "Challenge of Intolerance" courses for seniors we examine the fact that our superior brain capabilities are quite easily compromised by intra-neurological battles in deciding "Is what we know or believe true?" Burton's valuable book is a bold and worthy effort that opens up this crucial neurological process to further examination.
Burton deftly delves into neuroanatomy of our human sense of "certainty". Because non-neuroscientists are his audience, he attempts to educate us. But as others in his medical specialty often do, he sometimes loses us in the abstractions of which parts of our brain do what. The point of laypersons becoming "literate" about brain matters is that we need to learn how to APPLY brain research to everyday human affairs - and particularly how to recognize mistakes of judgment that can lead to corrosive intolerance that pits one against another. It's not just that we believe or don't believe in our certainty, but whether that "certainty" contributes to our being intolerant. If certainty is a cornerstone of intolerance, perhaps neuroscience can help us understand and control the urge to engage in dismissive or hateful behavior toward those who disagree with our beliefs. This question challenges every civil society that seeks to overcome intolerance impulses.
Overall, I find this book significant because the author seeks to engage more of us to self-examine how our brain often fools and misleads us into making rigid judgments about our beliefs and those of others. I hope Burton's work stimulates further inquiry in utilizing neuroscience research to illuminate ways humans can learn to detect and regulate impulses within our brain that lead us astray by turning us against others and ourselves.
While certainty, intolerance and hate may dwell within the human spirit (and brain) for our self-protection, when they get out of control we have war, degradation and mutual destruction. This dilemma is summed up by another wise 18th Century pragmatist, the English cleric and writer Charles Caleb Colton: "We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them."
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A Crucial Question: How Do You Know What You Know?
"On Being Certain: Believing You are Right Even When You're Not" provides a compelling examination of the feeling of certainty each of us have. Robert Burton, a neurologist and gifted writer, argues that this "feeling of knowing" is a sensation, much like touch or sight. Burton proposes a well-crafted thesis, suggesting that this feeling of knowing is identical whether or not the associated knowledge is true. Through a variety of means, he draws in the reader to formulate a convincing case. Burton explains that his motivation is for the reader to question how we really "know what we know," and much of the book serves this purpose quite well. However, a few chapters distract the reader by straying away from the central thesis. At other moments, Burton seems to do the very thing he cautions the reader against: presenting a "stance of absolute certainty" about topics that could allow for alternative opinions or understandings.
In the first four chapters of the book, Burton forms a strong introduction to his argument. He introduces the concept of the "feeling of knowing" through personal anecdotes and allows the reader to experience this feeling through a simple thought experiment. With this foundation, Burton uses case studies to explain that we often are certain of knowledge that is, in fact, untrue. Burton also suggests that pathologies often provide a basis for study of complex concepts in healthy individuals is supported by the story of a patient suffering from viral encephalitis and Cotard's Syndrome. Through this example, Burton illustrates the power of the brain to "know" something as true, even when logic and reason all indicate that it is false.
After forming the outline of his thesis, Burton spends the next several chapters crafting the most compelling points of his argument. The reader is introduced to pertinent aspects of neuroscience when they are relevant, and a layperson can easily follow the diagrams and explanations that Burton offers. By combining the prevailing theories in neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) research, Burton proposes a straightforward description of the decision-making process in the brain. His suggestion of a "hidden layer" that acts as a "committee" of influences (made of past memories, genetic predispositions, and even a "feeling of knowing") is easy to understand and seems to be a logical theory. With this model, his "perverse possibility" that an "unwarranted `feeling of knowing' might serve a positive evolutionary role" (95) is easily accepted as a reasonable theory.
In addition to arguing for the importance of this "feeling of knowing," Burton attempts to explain the manner in which this feeling acts. At this point, his argument begins to weaken. Burton describes the ability of the brain to "reorganize" the timing of actual events in order to present a more logical picture through the use of a baseball analogy. Additionally, he describes the scientific distinctions between emotions and sensations. These are interesting stories, but Burton does not provide any data to connect these concepts with his newly defined "feeling of knowing." His postulations are well thought out; however, he presents them so that an unwary reader might read his conclusions as fact, rather than theory.
The final few chapters of the book diverge from Burton's central thesis. Chapter twelve, focused on "reason" and "objectivity," includes a review of three recently published books about cognitive science in popular culture; however, none of them directly relate to his hypothesis. Burton remains a clear, coherent writer as he describes the problems with recent publications about "the rational mind," but he distracts the reader from the argument that he has previously built. An analysis of perspectives on alternative medicine has the potential to provide a strong argument for the central thesis of the book, and Burton approaches this argument. At one point, he says "imagine how different each of these claims would have been if intuition and gut feeling were acknowledged to be unconscious thoughts associated with a strong `feeling of knowing' rather than bona fide forms of trustworthy knowledge" (166). However, instead of advancing with this point, he changes the subject to the readers' perceptions and never solidifies a potentially compelling argument.
The chapter titled "Faith" is equally frustrating. It holds the potential to be the most compelling in the book: faith and the unfounded certainty Burton describes seem to be, in many ways, synonymous. Rather than focusing on why or how individuals have faith, Burton focuses more on the personalities and comments of those who claim to a concrete set of beliefs. The most frustrating aspect of this chapter is Burton's presentation of quotes that could be interpreted in many ways in a biased fashion, with his own concrete dissection of the quote. This certainty leads him to take isolated quotes from larger of bodies of work by Francis Collins and Charles Darwin and present them as parallel situations with opposing outcomes. This presentation allows Burton to make a return to his central thesis; however, isolated presentation of the quotes prevents the reader from having the opportunity to interpret the quotations any way other that which Burton presents with complete certainty.
Throughout the book, Burton's strong abilities are visible. He creates a well-crafted argument that will certainly receive further examination and will be the subject of many studies in years to come. Burton crafts a book that peers in his field and laypeople with no experience in neuroscience will be interested to read. Although he occasionally strays from the central thesis, his diversions are still well written and intriguing. The greatest weakness of the book is that Burton commits the same offense that he cautions against. His arguments are compelling, but not yet conclusive; however, he seems to allow his own "feeling of knowing" to dominate, and he presents his theories with complete certainty. Throughout the book, readers should constantly ask Burton his own question: "how do you know what you know?" (224) With this caution in mind, "On Being Certain" provides a fascinating examination of the brain's creation and utilization of certainty.
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 Engaging and Challenging Exploration of Belief
As an avid reader of books in this category, I was pleased to find something new in Robert Burton's book: a head-on engagement with the infrastructure of belief. The question Burton asks is on the face of it a simple one, but in its implications extremely complex: how do we know what we know? As a matter of practical observation, Burton asks why are some people so utterly convinced that their positions are correct while others consistently entertain doubt? From this starting point, Burton takes us through an entertaining and challenging tour -- part neuroscience, part psychology, and part philosophy. The interconnections between these disciplines are elegant and form the tapestry of a convincing argument. In my library I have a selection of books that have influenced my thinking, and among those are a select few that I revisit for insights over and over again. "On Being Certain" is among that select few, and I give it my highest recommendation.
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Great book ( mephistoszbe )
This is the challenge to 'certainty' (>>the kind of 'certainty', that is very familiar to religious and fanatic people<<) from the direction of SCIENCE (and not just philosophy) that has long been overdue.
And also it's like a shout out from the conscience of science to us scientists and the normal person from the street who has (maybe) never thought about what science does, and that message is:
"1.) Keep in mind, what 'certainty' means in science!
2.) Don't over -estimate/-interpret what you found.
3.) True knowledge is always testable for accuracy while belief is not!"
Thanks you Robert M. Burton.
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 cdc444 got it wrong ( cdc647 )
On Being Certain started out moderately interesting but at page 52 I hit a severe snag. When an author gets something I know about so totally wrong (or is being gratuitously nasty) I find I cannot trust what he says about things I don't know so much about. The comment that B.F. Skinner wanted to raise people like veal is so totally absurd I couldn't finish the book and will be returning it to Amazon for a refund.
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