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Lena's Reviews > On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton
by Robert A. Burton
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 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."
Needless to say, the ideas presented in this book will be discomforting to anyone who has come to rely on their gut feelings for decision making. Burton does a pretty good job of presenting his case that any feeling of certainty we experience tells us more about our inner biology than it does about the external world, and we would do well to understand that how much we can really know is far more limited by our biology than our rational minds would like to admit.
Of particular interest to me was a chapter in which he discusses the implications of these findings on the debate about religion. He takes both Dennett and Dawkins-as well as religious fundamentalists-to task for claiming certainty regarding the existence or non-existence of God. He claims that the space between 100% certain and 99.9999% certain is the best place to find tolerance for opposing viewpoints; if we can all admit the universal limitations of our minds, perhaps these debates could become a lot more civilized.
"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."
Needless to say, the ideas presented in this book will be discomforting to anyone who has come to rely on their gut feelings for decision making. Burton does a pretty good job of presenting his case that any feeling of certainty we experience tells us more about our inner biology than it does about the external world, and we would do well to understand that how much we can really know is far more limited by our biology than our rational minds would like to admit.
Of particular interest to me was a chapter in which he discusses the implications of these findings on the debate about religion. He takes both Dennett and Dawkins-as well as religious fundamentalists-to task for claiming certainty regarding the existence or non-existence of God. He claims that the space between 100% certain and 99.9999% certain is the best place to find tolerance for opposing viewpoints; if we can all admit the universal limitations of our minds, perhaps these debates could become a lot more civilized.
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Never having studied philosophy of mind, I don't know if he breaks new ground or not. Since he's a neuroscientist, he uses scientific studies rather than philosophical arguments to support his points (though he does give credit to philosophers who originally proposed this theory.) I'd be curious to hear your opinion of his book.
Lena -- do you remember whether this book examines the neurological and/or evolutionary basis for ideology? My "Cognition Reading Group" is considering this one for their next read.
Dennett and Dawkins don't claim to have certainty about the existence or non-existence of god(s). This meme will never let up though, will it? I've heard Dawkins say several times that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being absolute certainty that there is no god, that he's about a 7 or 8. In any case, I think the issue should be discussed clearly by defining which of the millions of conceptions of god(s) is on the table, because some of them are logically inconsistent to the point of logical impossibility, like a circular square, or 2+2=5, and so on. Those gods I'm certain do not exist. Others are merely wildly improbable, but not logical impossibilities.
The only realm there is certainty in is logic and mathematics (not every area of these fields either, as Godel's incompleteness theorem proves).
Still, looks like an interesting book.
Richard, I wish I could say, but I read it long enough ago that I don't remember. If I recall correctly, though, Wolpert's Six Impossible Things does posit some interesting theories along those lines, though.http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
MFSO, you're perfectly right about D & D's positions; I've heard Dawkins himself say as much. Burton may be guilty of using bad example in that case, but I think his overall points are still very worthwhile.
Quasi-random opinion: Hashing out issues of certainty is really interesting stuff, and like with most issues I think there's a place for both empirically-driven science and armchair-driven philosophy. However when it comes to the real nuts and bolts issues of epistemology I really do think that philosophy has primacy, considering that doing the neuroscientific heavy lifting of correlating neurological states with epistemic states itself presumes to have some level of certainty about the nature of the world as well. I think this kind of cognitive neuroscience is fascinating and important, but I would be very suspicious of any scientist who disregards the importance of the philosophical tools that can be used as well.
Hmm, Six Impossible Things looks good, but the emphasis there seems to be on "magical" belief, such as religion.We were discussing the broader problem of ideological thinking, such as "belief" in the efficient market hypothesis or rational actor theories, even among people (e.g., economists and traders) who should treat each of those as a useful gross approximation, at best.
So, why, when and how do we 'believe' what is arguably contrary to evidence (instead of in the absence of evidence).
Active denial might play a role here (deniers of global warming, evolution, the holocaust), but I think that gets away from the more interesting and troublesome problem.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (if I remember correctly), Kuhn argued that paradigms are so fundamental that often believers in the old paradigm never change their minds, they just die out. If they are that powerful in the natural sciences (which was Kuhn's scope), in the social sciences it seems likely that similar powerful-but-almost-certainly-wrong paradigms would never die out if they are sustained by culture, academic or otherwise.
So I guess I'm hunting around for that sorta stuff. :-)
Folks may want to check these out (they're short studies available online which I put up on Goodreads as "books"):Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty
The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief
I wish I could be more helpful. I know that in one of the books on my how-the- brain-works-shelf, it discusses at least briefly how (though I'm not sure why) the brain is more likely to believe information confirming an existing belief and to discount info contradicting it. If I could remember which book, though, then my own brain would clearly be working much better than it is ;-)
Darn it, when I saw that MFSO had commented, I was hoping he'd have suggested a title that address the cognition of paradigm beliefs.So, nothing?
Well, the (admittedly very preliminary) work Harris is doing in those links above addresses the differences between beliefs within a secular paradigm versus beliefs within a religious paradigm. But I don't know of any neuropsychological work being done comparing beliefs within differing scientific paradigms. It really seems impossible to do, given that anyone around during a preceding paradigm (as construed in Kuhnian terms) is dead.If you're interested in Kuhn you should check out this quick and fascinating read:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28...
And the Wolpert book is very interesting, too. But, as Greg and I discussed , it is severely lacking citations, and though based on pretty solid evidence, seems a bit arm-chair, especially for a serious developmental biologist like Wolpert. I still highly recommend it if you're interested in the evolutionary development of belief in general (it's not overly focused on religious belief at all, by the way).
MyFleshSingsOut wrote: "It really seems impossible to do, given that anyone around during a preceding paradigm (as construed in Kuhnian terms) is dead."Hey, they don't all die at once! In the physical sciences, I could envision a study looking at how "believers" in different GUTs think, and then contrast that over time once more evidence has come in.
Think of a three-way contrast, and examine the neural activity of: (1) younger scientists still uncertain whether to jump onto a post-Einsteinian system of theories, (2) tenured profs who's life work has been within the Einstein framework, and (3) eventually, those younger scientists once they've staked their territory and have an incentive in not having to start all over again.
But Harris' work leads me to believe that these paradigms will simply show up in neural scans the same way religious ideologies do, just as facts do.
MyFleshSingsOut wrote: "And the Wolpert book is very interesting, too.... I still highly recommend it if you're interested in the evolutionary development of belief in general (it's not overly focused on religious belief at all, by the way)."
My reading group is pretty much to the point where we get annoyed when "PopCog" books make too many approximations for the sake of popular digestibility. Ariely's Predictably Irrational, for example, took some heat for confusing us by leaving out some variables in the book that we discovered were explained in his academic papers. But Ariely's endnotes were adequate to his defense. It sounds like Wolpert might cause too much frustration :-)
Responding to MyFleshSingsOut on Dec 6, 2009: "Dennett and Dawkins don't claim to have certainty about the existence or non-existence of god(s)." Having just read Burton's book for the second time, I suspect he'd distinguish between having certainty based on evidence/argument and having the "feeling of certainty". People's rational arguments do not always entirely line up with their gut feeling. For example, someone might admit that "I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, and I can't trace the argument all the way out to its logical conclusion, but nevertheless I sincerely believe with all my being that God does (or does not) exist." My impression is that Dawkins in particular (having read his book and seen him speak in person) has a strong feeling that God exists but he admits that the scientific probability of his claims is not 100%. Dennett is probably in a similar camp, although I wouldn't attempt to diagnose his "feeling of certainty" from afar without re-reading his book.
If I recall correctly , the rational mind conumdrum was posed in my freshman Philosophy of Mind course. I will have to read the book to find out if Burton breaks any new ground.