On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not

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On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not

by Robert A. Burton

3.75 · rating details · 212 ratings · 51 reviews

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 shows that feeling certain—feeling that we know something--- is a mental sensa

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Paperback, 272 pages

Published March 17th 2009 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published February 5th 2008)

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Dec 29, 2011

Richard rated it

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Recommended to Richard by: Lena Phoenix

Shelves: cognition, non-fiction, bookclub

It is always somewhat astonishing when an intelligent author manages to make an interesting topic dull.

The unassailable certainty exhibited by ideologues of many varieties lies behind many of the world's political and cultural problems. One would expect that an examination of how such certainty develops and how one might avoid the traps this entails.

Burton has one good punch: he hammers home that the feeling of knowing is a feeling like any other: not really very amenable...more

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Mar 17, 2008

Lena rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction, how-the-brain-works

I'll start this review with a quote from the back of the book, since it explains the premise better than I can:

"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 con...more

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Jan 04, 2009

Jeffwest15 rated it

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This was given to me for Christmas, perhaps as a dig at my joked-about intensive defense of my own ideas.

Burton's thesis that there is an innate biological feeling of knowing, i.e. of certainty, that is separate and distinct from reason and actual fact, is not so hard for me to swallow. Our ability to believe that we are right about something is a useful but not always failsafe attribute. And reasoning itself is beset by bias that will never be entirely eliminated. So what, one mi...moreThis was given to me for Christmas, perhaps as a dig at my joked-about intensive defense of my own ideas.

Burton's thesis that there is an innate biological feeling of knowing, i.e. of certainty, that is separate and distinct from reason and actual fact, is not so hard for me to swallow. Our ability to believe that we are right about something is a useful but not always failsafe attribute. And reasoning itself is beset by bias that will never be entirely eliminated. So what, one might ask, is the big deal?

The book meanders over disparate subjects before 3/4 of the way through the book he finally puts it on the table. He takes his "you can only be 99.998% rational" argument and extends it to argue that man is biologically religious, that to assume a non-religious stance is itself just another act of faith. Man needs a sense of purpose; Dawkins gets it from science but others will be genetically driven to get it from religion. So, leave them alone, they are exercising their genetic dispositions! We innately talk of afterlife, soul, higher powers and seek the heartfelt joy and meaning of religion.

Data or evidence? Forget about it. The idea of a rational mind is an "unsubtantiated belief". So finally the bait-and-switch has been revealed. Evolution should be given provisional assent and it should be acknowledged that creationism and intelligent design might be right.

Where does this all come from? I tend to put this in the context of anti-enlightenment literature of the last 20 years and the more recent counterattack of anti-religious bestsellers by Dawkins and Hitchens and others that have perhaps attempted to capitalize on the unpopulartity of both Islamic and Evangelical fundamentalism to get their pro-science digs in. Burton's diatribe seems to me to be in the same vein as that of Chris Hedges' "I Don't Believe in Atheists" - also given to me for some reason - that tries to find a moderate middle ground between mysticism and science. And hating Dawkins, the rotweiler defender of science ties them both together.

Am I certain of this? Kinda. But from now on according to Burton, I should say that it is my belief.

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Dec 26, 2011

Tucker rated it

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Shelves: finished

What do we know about what we know? "Metaknowledge," knowledge about knowledge, is addressed in this book under "the feeling of knowing," into which Burton collapses the feelings of certainty, rightness, conviction and correctness.

You know what he's talking about: The sense that you know the answer, that the answer is "on the tip of your tongue," in the seconds, minutes, or hours before you are actually able to access the correct information. The conv...moreWhat do we know about what we know? "Metaknowledge," knowledge about knowledge, is addressed in this book under "the feeling of knowing," into which Burton collapses the feelings of certainty, rightness, conviction and correctness.

You know what he's talking about: The sense that you know the answer, that the answer is "on the tip of your tongue," in the seconds, minutes, or hours before you are actually able to access the correct information. The conviction that you've found the same street you visited years ago when in fact you are wrong. The feeling can override one's logical awareness, as when someone has phantom limb sensation and is convinced the limb somehow actually exists; knows oneself to have received a placebo yet nevertheless believes oneself to have been healed due to that "medication"; has Cotard's syndrome and is convinced that one is dead despite being conscious and showing ample signs of life; or is schizophrenic and believes oneself to be in contact with aliens. Examples of the opposite of the "feeling of knowing" include obsessive-compulsive disorder in which an individual may be in constant doubt of having locked all the doors; someone who suffers a stroke and is convinced that one's belongings have been replaced by fakes, although every last detail about them remains identical; or someone who has "blindsight," able to visually navigate a room while believing oneself to be blind.

"The feeling of knowing is universal," Burton writes, "most likely originates within a localized region of the brain, can be spontaneously activated via direct stimulation or chemical manipulation, yet cannot be triggered by conscious effort. These arguments for its inclusion as a primary brain module are more compelling than those postulated for deceit, compassion, forgiveness, altruism or Machiavellian cunning." (p. 61) In other words, the feeling of knowing is more basic to our brains even than ethical feelings and thoughts.

Ben Libet's oft-cited book Mind Time -- which I've not read yet -- is cited by Burton as well. It has been described as raising the possibility that many decisions are made on an unconscious level and only several seconds later does the conscious mind take credit for having made the decision and confabulates a reason for the alleged choice. (p. 208) This does not mean, however, that one will like the decision later on or that it will turn out to be beneficial. (pp. 152-153) In fact, Burton criticizes Malcolm Gladwell's Blink for its praise of subconscious decision-making. While accepting that the ability to make split-second decisions is indeed adaptive for a species that faces frequent threats, Burton reminds us that decisions made by the gut are unscientific and aren't always correct or beneficial. (pp. 147-148, 185-186)

Science shows us how to understand probabilities, so we shouldn't demand certainties. Risk management is uncomfortable insofar as it carries an "inescapable moral dimension," in that, when you make a choice, you're hoping for one outcome while also accepting responsibility that something else might happen. Our tolerance for risk may have a genetic component.

He quotes William James as having written about religious experience: "Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge." He adds: "This is a brilliant observation, equating religious and mystical states with the sensation of knowing, and with the further recognition that such knowledge is felt, not thought....James's description is perfectly straightforward--with mystical states, people experience spontaneous mental sensations that feel like knowledge but occur in the absence of any specific knowledge." (p. 23) Initially it seems, then, that the feeling of knowing underpins religion. Later, Burton asks: "Are there inherent individual differences in the degree and quality of expression of these [biological] rewards [for abstract thought]...Can we learn to sense greater pleasure out of feelings of doubt in the way that some people derive more pleasure from questions than answers?" (pp. 100-101) He goes on to mention a study that suggests that religious tendencies may be genetic. (p. 104)

Taking his comments about ethics and religion together--with the feeling of knowing underpinning both of them--this points in a very interesting direction. First, I want to point out that some atheists are possessed of a very strong feeling of knowing, equivalent to that enjoyed by some theists. Colloquially they are often called "dogmatic atheists" although this is somewhat of a misnomer. Such atheists do not strictly obey a dogma proposed by a leader, but they are nevertheless convinced that they have found the truth, in part because they feel that they have found it. My commonsense intuition, however (for what it's worth), is that people who bring a strong feeling of knowing to their spiritual or philosophical lives are much more likely to lean theist rather than atheist. As for ethics, people with a strong feeling of knowing are probably more likely to be moral absolutists rather than moral relativists, where relativism's hallmarks are often the expression of constant questions and doubts. The correctness of both of these hypotheses would have to be investigated. If true, they could explain why a belief in God tends to pair with moral absolutism. It isn't because moral beliefs logically require absolute grounding, nor is God able to serve as such a grounding. (Plato's Euthyphro--"do the gods love it because it is good, or is it good because the gods love it?"--dispensed with this association.) Rather, it could be that a strong feeling of knowing encourages both belief in God and belief in absolute morality. There are, of course, unusual pairings: Sam Harris is an insistent atheist and in The Moral Landscape he revealed himself to be insistently morally absolutist as well. But I suspect that the majority of atheist-leaning individuals tend to feel less certain of their theological position (probably describing themselves as "spiritual but not religious" or "agnostic") and will also tend to feel less certain of their ethical or meta-ethical position, simply because this degree of the feeling of knowing is in their personality type.(less)

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Oct 19, 2009

Cliff rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton, MD

"The message at the heart of this book is that the feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction and certainty aren't deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations that happen to us."

He gives a practical exercise to demonstrate the change in our minds between a seemingly random and meaningless list of attributes, and a clear description of some...more

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Aug 27, 2009

Lynn rated it

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I liked it even though there was a lot I disagreed with. Burton shows how tenuos our knowledge is , but he glossed over one of his stated goals, to clearly distinguish scientific knowledge from other kinds of knowledge. His excerpts from Darwin's autobiography made the point, but he seemed to ignore the significance of Darwin's ability to know likely truth and to recognize likely self-deception. He could have spent a lot more time and effort showing how scientific knowledge is substantially ...moreI liked it even though there was a lot I disagreed with. Burton shows how tenuos our knowledge is , but he glossed over one of his stated goals, to clearly distinguish scientific knowledge from other kinds of knowledge. His excerpts from Darwin's autobiography made the point, but he seemed to ignore the significance of Darwin's ability to know likely truth and to recognize likely self-deception. He could have spent a lot more time and effort showing how scientific knowledge is substantially different than non-scientific knowledge.

He plays down the scientifc method. I believe he does so because it doesn’t support his primary theme, that we can never have certainty about anything we claim to know. Those he criticizes (Dawkins and Dennett) and other scientists recognize the difference between opinion and scientific evidence. I think Burton does too, but he ignores it in this book. In fact, Feynman rebuts some of Burton's overextended claims about knowledge with the following statement:

"I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me."

Like some other books I have been reading lately, this book helps me understand how irrational many beliefs are. It wasn't convincing that all beliefs are in some way equivalent, just because they are all based on an irrational hidden layer. The hidden layer is there, but science shows that some beliefs can be tested, and this is a significant fact which Burton barely plays lip service to. Maybe he's hoping for a Templeton award.(less)

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Jun 15, 2009

Eva rated it

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Shelves: existential-religious

I was totally in love with this book when I first picked it up. Just saw it on the shelf, started browsing it, and couldn't put it down. A neurologist who is also a novelist, who has a lifelong interest in existential questions and wrote essays on William James in college? Dude! It seemed like we should be BFF.
Unfortunately, I found myself increasingly irritated with the book, and have gone from recommending it to everyone I see to only giving it 3 stars.
The author starts with a fas...more

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May 17, 2009

Jacob J rated it

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I really thought I was going to like this book because I enjoy epistemology and cognitive science. And yet, I only made it about 2/3 of the way through the book before I gave up. It was not so much that it was boring as that it was frustrating. The main problem I had was that this book does not present scientific evidence and talk about implications or possible interpretations. Rather, it presents the author's theory about the existence and function of what he calls "the feeling of know...more

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May 12, 2008

Mazola1 rated it

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This books deals with topics like thinking about thinking and why we are certain about our beliefs, ideas and opinions. Part neuroscience,part philosophy, it tries to reconcile religion and science and doesn't quite pull it off. It goes into some depth about unconscious ideas as the basis for decision making, but never really gives a coherent answer as to whether or not free will is just an illusion. But if it is, why did the author write this book?

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Jun 22, 2010

Joe rated it

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Robert Burton has written a very accessible book that ends up spanning a much wider range of the biological limitations of the human mind than the title implies.

Robert shows evidence that feelings of rightness or certainty are one of our basic emotions, and the role that emotion plays in our decision making. But he also does a great job of discussing how much of our brain's work happens in parts of the brain inaccessible by our perceptual mind.

I'd highly recommend this book ...more

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Jul 24, 2010

Darin Stewart rated it

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Burton makes a compelling argument for the impossibility of absolute certainty and the need to be comfortable with uncertainty in all aspects of our lives. He quotes Richard Feynman at one point and I think the Nobel Laureates view nicely summarizes the end goal.

"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything. For many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means...more

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Aug 13, 2009

Andrew rated it

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Shelves: business-books, health-at-work, science-and-mathematics

This is one of the best books I've read in a while. I was doubtful it would be much good, but the more I read the better it got. If you're interested in understanding why it is that we think we know what we know and how our minds really work when it comes to the feeling of certainty, this is a great book. If you're familiar with Landmark technology, this explains some of the biology and neurology behind our overconfidence in our own knowledge. Great to read if you're a religious fanatic or a fer...more

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Mar 23, 2011

Billie rated it

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There are a lot of interesting ideas in this book. I was a little disappointed because I felt like the chapter on Faith, which was actually quite fascinating, was almost a tangent from which the book really didn't come back. I started reading the book hoping to find something about the affective domain that would help with my work in teaching and learning, and the first part of the book seemed like it was going to go there. So perhaps my frustrations with the book were a little unfair because my...more

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Nov 16, 2009

Igor rated it

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Recommends it for: rcj

Do you know that feeling of being certain about something? Having a hunch? Having something no the tip of your tongue? Imagine a world without that feeling at all. Everything is a purely reason driven cost/benefit analysis. Do emotions or intuitive emotions driving you to make a decision. You would be paralyzed. Unable to decide what to do because you had no feelings that something is more important or desirable than something else. Imagine getting dressed in such a case. Having no inclination o...moreDo you know that feeling of being certain about something? Having a hunch? Having something no the tip of your tongue? Imagine a world without that feeling at all. Everything is a purely reason driven cost/benefit analysis. Do emotions or intuitive emotions driving you to make a decision. You would be paralyzed. Unable to decide what to do because you had no feelings that something is more important or desirable than something else. Imagine getting dressed in such a case. Having no inclination of what is better to wear at a given time. Most of our beliefs and decisions are guided heavily by unconscious, chemically constrained emotions.

To see the scope of emotional influence over people's feeling of being correct, or certain about something -- even in the absence of enough evidence to make it undoubtedly certain. Pathologies of such feelings of knowing can demonstrate the spectrum of the effect of this feeling on behavior. In one case, there is the complete lack of the feeling of certainty in OCD effected people. They are always nervous and unsure of things and thus neurotically check, and recheck, or clean and reclean, and continue to do thing because there is no certainty in the feeling that the work has been satisfied.

The opposite would be a pathology of feelings of hyper-certainty with little or no evidence, such as in the case of paranoid schizophrenia. Victims experience feeling of certainty that they are being watch, followed, controlled, or otherwise invaded by others, without any plausible reason.

People who embrace these feelings of unfounded certainty can be considered fundamentalists, ideologues, or insane. It seems that most likely the real world is devoid of objective truths, and it rather a series of probability functions. Our brains shuffle through these functions unconsciously and send emotional shortcuts in the form of inclinations, hunches, intuition, etc, into conscious awareness, which account for only the tip of the ice berg of actual thought. That is, we are a aware (are conscious) of a mere tiny fraction of our thoughts.

How do we know what we know? How can we know when we limited with probability functions. You can never be 100% sure. By making the leap to 100% certain from 99.99% likely is a leap of faith. It is also an emotion that perhaps had real evolutionary value by helping us make decisions.

This book also makes a strong case against free will, referring to the belief that all thought is constrained by it biologically foundation. Consciousness rides a vary narrow chunck of computation done by the brain, and is the storm of neuronal and chemical activity in the brain. Without the chemicals and the network, there would be no experience. It could be furthered that all experience is biologically driven and constrained. This implies biological determinism and further marginalizes free will in the selfish replication of memes and memeplexes between human brains. The feeling of consciousness, or being alive is simply a useful evolutionary feeling. He also suggests that the drive for faith and religion (or mysticism, and even science) is heavily genetically and biologically driven.

"Certainty is [likely:] not biologically possible." "We must learn to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty."

"The feelings of knowing, correctness, and certainty aren't deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations that happen to us."

Its a great book. I highly recommend it to everyone.(less)

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Jun 07, 2009

Kevin rated it

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Shelves: cognitive-science

In the words of the author:

The message at the heart of this book is that the feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction, and certainty aren't deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations that happen to us.

Unfortunately, once one understands this point, the rest of the book is rather less inspiring than promised. Although the discussions concerning the neural basis of experience is well-written, once the author turns to more speculative areas such as evolution...more

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Aug 04, 2011

Leah rated it

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Shelves: neuro

I did my duty as a citizen and amassed library fines in order to finish this they way it deserved: slowly, with thought.

Burton addresses a confusing neurological issue with as much clarity as could be expected when language limits mandate a preface mostly explaining what the author means by italicizing "feeling of knowing", defining "know" as it will be used, and cautioning the reader about the actual, biological meaning of assumptions, intuition, and gut feeling...more

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Dec 31, 2009

Clay rated it

The author takes on a topic that I've always taken for granted and surveys a wide expanse of investigation into his topic. Unfortunately, he muddles his definitions and makes statements more in accord with his assumptions than the evidence he presents. The certainty of a person in a psychotic episode, the certainty I feel when I misplace my keys, and the certainty of a researcher referencing articles for a journal paper all deserve serious inquiry. But just because the paucity of our language la...more

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Dec 07, 2010

Andrew rated it

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Shelves: one-book-per-week-10-11

Quite a good book, except that he veers off course at the when discussing faith and science. Burton seems to think that the scientific method is that which individual scientists do in their labs; in reality it is the cumulative process of many individuals working separately. Thus, science is analogous to the emergent consciousness in the human brain that Burton describes ably earlier in the book, so it is surprising that he doesn't make the connection later on. Still his argument that the lim...more

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Aug 22, 2011

Brendan rated it

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Shelves: 2011, advice-theory, evolution, non-fiction, philosophy-religion, science

This book took me a long time to read because I borrowed it from the library and couldn't renew it, so I had to return it and then borrow it again. Even so, it was worth it. Burton, an acclaimed neurologist, asks what's going on in our brains when we believe we know something (he calls this the feeling of knowing). He makes a strong case for the biological weirdness of that feeling, and its disconnection from actual knowledge. A few highlights:

Burton highlights my two favorite pe...more

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Jul 09, 2011

David Bradley rated it

YAWN. This book could have been presented in the length of a blog post, not a full-length book. The central point of the book -- that the feeling of certainty is separate from the content of that certainty -- is very well-taken, though, and for that reason it gets 2 stars. It's a deep insight. However, the vast majority of the book is spent in unrelated tangents about ways of knowing. I ended up skipping about half the book, in the middle, once I realized it was an off-topic repetition of t...more

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Apr 09, 2009

Constance rated it

There are some interesting ideas in this book, all of which can be summarized as follows: The feeling of knowing or meaning is a sensation of the brain that serves an evolutionary function and that is often unrelated to external, objective, rational factors (similar to, as I told M., the feeling of love!). Thus, feeling like we know something for certain doesn't mean that it's true - it's just a cute little sensation that our brain makes up.

Okay, sure, great, but the book fails to ...more

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Aug 22, 2010

John rated it

This was written by a neurologist but it is more like an extended essay musing on epistemology - not a technical book. He considers the experience of *feeling certain* at length and asks the reader to use the verb "believe" in place of "know". (From the back cover: the feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.)

There isn't much new here if you have a background in philosophy, but, this is a nicely written book that has some interesting arguments...more

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Aug 19, 2011

Jeff Grann rated it

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The main argument is that certainty is a byproduct of our brains (similar to how eyes produce sight) and NOT a direct consequence of rationality or emotions. Burton helps raise a few dilemmas from modern psychology by juxtaposing a few provocative findings against broad western mores, language, law, literature, and religion. For the bravado, I most enjoyed his principled critique of wildly popular authors, such as Gladwell, Dawkins, Gould, and Goldman.

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Jun 21, 2010

Chuck rated it

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An interesting look at how we believe in what we know. Biological discoveries help to make it even clearer that what we think we know, how empirically/logically correct it is and how much we believe in it are decoupled.

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Aug 03, 2009

Lise Dumont rated it

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A good book to read if you're stubborn, like me. This book is interesting to read just before or after The Drunkard's Walk as the cover a lot of the same topics from a different perspective.

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Aug 13, 2011

Jennifer rated it

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Interesting, but gets a bit long-winded at times. Especially like the idea that those who fight to be certain may feel something similar to those who are addicted to gambling.

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Aug 12, 2010

Dianne rated it

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This is a really good book about why and how we make decisions and act the way we do. There's a lot of jargon, but he keeps it to a minimum without dumbing down. I learned a lot.

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May 25, 2010

Pete rated it

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If this doesn't shake your faith in what you think you know...nothing will. I read this just after "Many Lives, Many Masters" what a combination! The best I can do is "maybe."

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Aug 08, 2011

Mark Slee added it · review of another edition

Interesting concept. The book didn't quite deliver for me, felt it could have been shorter and meandered a bit, but worth the read.

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Oct 21, 2011

James Elliott rated it

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Though I was already familiar with many of the psychological and neurological principles on which this book is based, through my minors in psychology and philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate student, I had never seen them pulled together in service of such an important thesis and guiding principle. This is really an important book to read, ponder, and internalize.

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“Though not necessarily aware of when we feel purpose and meaning, we are nearly always aware of the sickening feeling when we don't possess them. This isn't an intellectual misapprehension; it is a gut sense of disorientation and a loss of personal direction. Rarely are brute mental effort and self-help pep talks able to rekindle the missing feeling. For most of us, we simply wait patiently, knowing from past experience that the feeling will return in its own sweet time . . . Of particular interest is [Tolstoy's] conclusion as to the inability of science and reason to provide a personal sense of meaning.” — 2 people liked it

“If a conservationist has more stathmin, less risk-taking gene, and the pro-drilling advocate has less stathmin, more risk-taking gene, how can the two have a reasonable dialogue?” — 1 person liked it

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