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

From the Publisher

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.

ROBERT BURTON, M.D. graduated from Yale University and University of California at San Francisco medical school, where he also completed his neurology residency. At age 33, he was appointed chief of the Division of Neurology at Mt. Zion-UCSF Hospital, where he subsequently became Associate Chief of the Department of Neurosciences. His non-neurology writing career includes three critically acclaimednovels. He lives in Sausalito, California. Visit his website at http://www.rburton.com/

“What do we do when we recognize that a false certainty feels the same as certainty about the sky being blue? A lesser guide might get bogged down in nail-biting doubts about the limits of knowledge. Yet Burton not only makes clear the fascinating beauty of this tangled terrain, he also brings us out the other side with a clearer sense of how to navigate. It's a lovely piece of work; I'm all but certain you'll like it. “

--David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness; Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral

“Burton has a great talent for combining wit and insight in a way both palatable and profound.”

--Johanna Shapiro PhD, professor of Family Medicine at UC Irvine School of Medicine

 “A new way of looking at knowledge that merits close reading by scientists and general readers alike.”

--Kirkus

 “This could be one of the most important books of the year. With so much riding on ‘certainty,’ and so little known about how people actually reach a state of certainty about anything, some plain speaking from a knowledgeable neuroscientist is called for. If Gladwell's Blink was fascinating but largely anecdotal, Burton's book drills down to the real science behind snap judgments and other decision-making.”

-- Howard Rheingold, futurist and author of Smart Mobs

“A fascinating read. Burton’s engaging prose takes us into the deepest corners of our subconscious, making us question our most solid contentions. Nobody who reads this book will walk away from it and say ‘I know this for sure’ ever again.”

--Sylvia Pagán Westphal, science reporter, The Wall Street Journal

“Burton provides a compelling and though-provoking case that we should be more skeptical about our beliefs. Along the way, he also provides a novel perspective on many lines of research that should be of interest to readers who are looking for a broad introduction to the cognitive sciences.”

--Seed Magazine

 

Seed Magazine

Burton provides a compelling and though-provoking case that we should be more skeptical about our beliefs. Along the way, he also provides a novel perspective on many lines of research that should be of interest to readers who are looking for a broad introduction to the cognitive sciences."

Forbes

The day after the space shuttle Challenger disaster, a psychology professor names Ulric Neisser had his students write precisely where they'd been when they heard about the explosion. Two and a half years later, he asked them for the same information. While fewer than one in ten got the details right, almost all were certain that their memories were accurate, and many couldn't be dissuaded even after seeing their original notes. For neurologist Robert A. Burton, the Challenger study is emblematic of an essential quality of the human mind and evocative of the psychology underlying everything from nationalism to fundamentalism. In his brilliant new book, Bur-ton systematically shows that certainty is a mental state, a feeling like anger or pride that can help guide us, but that doesn't dependably reflect object truth. Evidence for Burrton's fascinating insight is everywhere around us, and On Being Certain expertly weaves together studies from Science and The New England Journal of Medicine, as well as the front page of The New York Times, to consider the myriad ways in which the brain constructs a useful worldview-often by manipulating details for the sake of consistency-and sometimes, as in the case of schizophrenia, takes untenable liberties. Faces with inherent unreliability of the human mind, a lesser author might become cynical. Burton, however, is able to appreciate the cultural of unjustified certainty, which fuels the impulsive creativity of scientists and artists alike. Equally important, he argues that :if science can shame us into questioning the nature of conviction, we might develop some degree of tolerance an increased willingness to consideralternative ideas." In the polarizing atmosphere of the 2008 election. On Being Certain ought to be required reading for every candidate-and for every citizen.—Jonathon Keats

What People Are Saying

Howard Rheingold
This could be one of the most important books of the year. With so much riding on 'certainty,' and so little known about how people actually reach a state of certainty about anything, some plain speaking from a knowledgeable neuroscientist is called for. If Gladwell's Blink was fascinating but largely anecdotal, Burton's book drills down to the real science behind snap judgments and other decision-making. (Howard Rheingold, futurist and author of Smart Mobs)

David Dobbs
What do we do when we recognize that a false certainty feels the same as certainty about the sky being blue? A lesser guide might get bogged down in nail-biting doubts about the limits of knowledge. Yet Burton not only makes clear the fascinating beauty of this tangled terrain, he also brings us out the other side with a clearer sense of how to navigate. It's a lovely piece of work; I'm all but certain you'll like it. (David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness; Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral)

Johanna Shapiro
Burton has a great talent for combining wit and insight in a way both palatable and profound. (Johanna Shapiro PhD, professor of Family Medicine at UC Irvine School of Medicine)

Sylvia Pagan Westphal
A fascinating read. Burton's engaging prose takes us into the deepest corners of our subconscious, making us question our most solid contentions. Nobody who reads this book will walk away from it and say 'I know this for sure' ever again. (Sylvia Pagán Westphal, science reporter, The Wall Street Journal)

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
I am stuck in an obligatory neighborhood cocktail party during the first week of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A middle-aged, pin-striped lawyer announces that he’d love to be in the front lines when the troops reach Baghdad. “Door-to-door fighting,” he says, puffing up his chest. He says he’s certain he could shoot an Iraqi soldier, although he’s never been in a conflict bigger than a schoolyard brawl.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’d have trouble shooting some young kid who was being forced to fight.”
“Not me. We’re down to dog-eat-dog.”
He nods at his frowning wife, who’s anti-invasion. “All’s fair in love and war.” Then back to me. “You’re not one of those peacenik softies, are you?”
“It wouldn’t bother you to kill someone?”
“Not a bit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
He’s a neighbor and I can’t escape. So I tell him one of my father’s favorite self-mocking stories.
During the 1930s and ’40s, my father had a pharmacy in one of the tougher areas of San Francisco. He kept a small revolver hidden beneath the back cash register. One night, a man approached, pulled out a knife, and demanded all the money in the register. My father reached under the counter, grabbed his gun, and aimed it at the robber.
“Drop it,” the robber said, his knife at my father’s throat. “You’re not going to shoot me, but I will kill you.”
For a moment it was a Hollywood standoff, mano a mano. Then my father put down his gun, emptiedout the register, and handed over the money.
“What’s your point?” the lawyer asks. “Your father should have shot him.”
“Just the obvious,” I say. “You don’t always know what you’re going to do until you’re in the moment.”
“Sure you do. I know with absolute certainty that I’d shoot anyone who was threatening me.”
“No chance of any hesitation?”
“None at all. I know myself. I know what I would do. End of discussion.”  my mind reels with seemingly impossible questions. What kind of knowledge is “I know myself and what I would do”? Is it a conscious decision based upon deep self-contemplation or is it a “gut feeling”? But what is a gut feeling—an unconscious decision, a mood or emotion, an ill-defined but clearly recognizable mental state, or a combination of all these ingredients? If we are to understand how we know what we know, we first need some ground rules, including a general classification of mental states that create our sense of knowledge about our knowledge.
For simplicity, I have chosen to lump together the closely allied feelings of certainty, rightness, conviction, and correctness under the all-inclusive term, the feeling of knowing. Whether or not these are separate sensations or merely shades or degrees of a common feeling isn’t important. What they do share is a common quality: Each is a form of metaknowledge—knowledge about our knowledge—that qualifies or colors our thoughts, imbuing them with a sense of rightness or wrongness. When focusing on the phenomenology (how these sensations feel), I’ve chosen to use the term the feeling of knowing (in italics). However, when talking about the underlying science, I’ll use knowing (in italics). Later I will expand this category to include feelings of familiarity and realness—qualities that enhance our sense of correctness.  Everyone is familiar with the most commonly recognized feeling of knowing. When asked a question, you feel strongly that you know an answer that you cannot immediately recall. Psychologists refer to this hard-to-describe but easily recognizable feeling as a tip-of-the-tongue sensation. The frequent accompanying comment as you scan your mental Rolodex for the forgotten name or phone number: “I know it, but I just can’t think of it.” In this example, you are aware of knowing something, without knowing what this sense of knowing refers to.
Anyone who’s been frustrated with a difficult math problem has appreciated the delicious moment of relief when an incomprehensible equation suddenly makes sense. We “see the light.” This aha is a notification from a subterranean portion of our mind, an involuntary all-clear signal that we have grasped the heart of a problem. It isn’t just that we can solve the problem; we also “know” that we understand it.
Most feelings of knowing are far less dramatic. We don’t ordinarily sense them as spontaneous emotions or moods like love or happiness; rather they feel like thoughts—elements of a correct line of reasoning. We learn to add 2+2. Our teacher tells us that 4 is the correct answer. Yes, we hear a portion of our mind say. Something within us tells us that we “know” that our answer is correct. At this simplest level of understanding, there are two components to our understanding—the knowledge that 2+2=4, and the judgment or assessment of this understanding. We know that our understanding that 2+2=4 is itself correct.
The feeling of knowing is also commonly recognized by its absence. Most of us are all too familiar with the frustration of being able to operate a computer without having any “sense” of how the computer really works. Or learning physics despite having no “feeling” for the rightness of what you’ve learned. I can fix a frayed electrical cord, yet am puzzled by the very essence of electricity. I can pick up iron filings with a magnet without having the slightest sense of what magnetism “is.”
At a deeper level, most of us have agonized over those sickening “crises of faith” when firmly held personal beliefs are suddenly stripped of a visceral sense of correctness, rightness, or meaning. Our most considered beliefs suddenly don’t “feel right.” Similarly, most of us have been shocked to hear that a close friend or relative has died unexpectedly, and yet we “feel” that he is still alive. Such upsetting news often takes time to “sink in.” This disbelief associated with hearing about a death is an example of the sometimes complete disassociation between intellectual and felt knowledge.
To begin our discussion of the feeling of knowing, read the following excerpt at normal speed. Don’t skim, give up halfway through, or skip to the explanation. Because this experience can’t be duplicated once you know the explanation, take a moment to ask yourself how you feel about the paragraph. After reading the clarifying word, reread the paragraph. As you do so, please pay close attention to the shifts in your mental state and your feeling about the paragraph.
A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.
Is this paragraph comprehensible or meaningless? Feel your mind sort through potential explanations. Now watch what happens with the presentation of a single word: kite. As you reread the paragraph, feel the prior discomfort of something amiss shifting to a pleasing sense of rightness. Everything fits; every sentence works and has meaning. Reread the paragraph again; it is impossible to regain the sense of not understanding. In an instant, without due conscious deliberation, the paragraph has been irreversibly infused with a feeling of knowing.
Try to imagine other interpretations for the paragraph. Suppose I tell you that this is a collaborative poem written by a third-grade class, or a collage of strung-together fortune cookie quotes. Your mind balks. The presence of this feeling of knowing makes contemplating alternatives physically difficult.
Each of us probably read the paragraph somewhat differently, but certain features seem universal. After seeing the word kite, we quickly go back and reread the paragraph, testing the sentences against this new piece of information. At some point, we are convinced. But when and how?
The kite paragraph raises several questions central to our understanding of how we “know” something. Though each will be discussed at greater length in subsequent chapters, here’s a sneak preview.
• Did you consciously “decide” that kite was the correct explanation for the paragraph, or did this decision occur involuntarily, outside of conscious awareness?
•  What brain mechanism(s) created the shift from not knowing to knowing?
•  When did this shift take place? (Did you know that the explanation was correct before, during, or after you reread the paragraph?)
•  After rereading the paragraph, are you able to consciously separate out the feeling of knowing that kite is the correct answer from a reasoned understanding that the answer is correct?
•  Are you sure that kite is the correct answer? If so, how do you know? Copyright © 2008 by Robert A. Burton, M.D. All rights reserved.

Read a Sample Chapter

On Being Certain

Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not

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By Burton, Robert St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2008 Burton, Robert
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312359201

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Chapter 1
I am stuck in an obligatory neighborhood cocktail party during the first week of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A middle-aged, pin-striped lawyer announces that he’d love to be in the front lines when the troops reach Baghdad. “Door-to-door fighting,” he says, puffing up his chest. He says he’s certain he could shoot an Iraqi soldier, although he’s never been in a conflict bigger than a schoolyard brawl.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’d have trouble shooting some young kid who was being forced to fight.”
“Not me. We’re down to dog-eat-dog.”
He nods at his frowning wife, who’s anti-invasion. “All’s fair in love and war.” Then back to me. “You’re not one of those peacenik softies, are you?”
“It wouldn’t bother you to kill someone?”
“Not a bit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
He’s a neighbor and I can’t escape. So I tell him one of my father’s favorite self-mocking stories.
During the 1930s and ’40s, my father had a pharmacy in one of the tougher areas of San Francisco. He kept a small revolver hidden beneath the back cash register. One night, a man approached, pulledout a knife, and demanded all the money in the register. My father reached under the counter, grabbed his gun, and aimed it at the robber.
“Drop it,” the robber said, his knife at my father’s throat. “You’re not going to shoot me, but I will kill you.”
For a moment it was a Hollywood standoff, mano a mano. Then my father put down his gun, emptied out the register, and handed over the money.
“What’s your point?” the lawyer asks. “Your father should have shot him.”
“Just the obvious,” I say. “You don’t always know what you’re going to do until you’re in the moment.”
“Sure you do. I know with absolute certainty that I’d shoot anyone who was threatening me.”
“No chance of any hesitation?”
“None at all. I know myself. I know what I would do. End of discussion.”  my mind reels with seemingly impossible questions. What kind of knowledge is “I know myself and what I would do”? Is it a conscious decision based upon deep self-contemplation or is it a “gut feeling”? But what is a gut feeling—an unconscious decision, a mood or emotion, an ill-defined but clearly recognizable mental state, or a combination of all these ingredients? If we are to understand how we know what we know, we first need some ground rules, including a general classification of mental states that create our sense of knowledge about our knowledge.
For simplicity, I have chosen to lump together the closely allied feelings of certainty, rightness, conviction, and correctness under the all-inclusive term, the feeling of knowing. Whether or not these are separate sensations or merely shades or degrees of a common feeling isn’t important. What they do share is a common quality: Each is a form of metaknowledge—knowledge about our knowledge—that qualifies or colors our thoughts, imbuing them with a sense of rightness or wrongness. When focusing on the phenomenology (how these sensations feel), I’ve chosen to use the term the feeling of knowing (in italics). However, when talking about the underlying science, I’ll use knowing (in italics). Later I will expand this category to include feelings of familiarity and realness—qualities that enhance our sense of correctness.  Everyone is familiar with the most commonly recognized feeling of knowing. When asked a question, you feel strongly that you know an answer that you cannot immediately recall. Psychologists refer to this hard-to-describe but easily recognizable feeling as a tip-of-the-tongue sensation. The frequent accompanying comment as you scan your mental Rolodex for the forgotten name or phone number: “I know it, but I just can’t think of it.” In this example, you are aware of knowing something, without knowing what this sense of knowing refers to.
Anyone who’s been frustrated with a difficult math problem has appreciated the delicious moment of relief when an incomprehensible equation suddenly makes sense. We “see the light.” This aha is a notification from a subterranean portion of our mind, an involuntary all-clear signal that we have grasped the heart of a problem. It isn’t just that we can solve the problem; we also “know” that we understand it.
Most feelings of knowing are far less dramatic. We don’t ordinarily sense them as spontaneous emotions or moods like love or happiness; rather they feel like thoughts—elements of a correct line of reasoning. We learn to add 2+2. Our teacher tells us that 4 is the correct answer. Yes, we hear a portion of our mind say. Something within us tells us that we “know” that our answer is correct. At this simplest level of understanding, there are two components to our understanding—the knowledge that 2+2=4, and the judgment or assessment of this understanding. We know that our understanding that 2+2=4 is itself correct.
The feeling of knowing is also commonly recognized by its absence. Most of us are all too familiar with the frustration of being able to operate a computer without having any “sense” of how the computer really works. Or learning physics despite having no “feeling” for the rightness of what you’ve learned. I can fix a frayed electrical cord, yet am puzzled by the very essence of electricity. I can pick up iron filings with a magnet without having the slightest sense of what magnetism “is.”
At a deeper level, most of us have agonized over those sickening “crises of faith” when firmly held personal beliefs are suddenly stripped of a visceral sense of correctness, rightness, or meaning. Our most considered beliefs suddenly don’t “feel right.” Similarly, most of us have been shocked to hear that a close friend or relative has died unexpectedly, and yet we “feel” that he is still alive. Such upsetting news often takes time to “sink in.” This disbelief associated with hearing about a death is an example of the sometimes complete disassociation between intellectual and felt knowledge.
To begin our discussion of the feeling of knowing, read the following excerpt at normal speed. Don’t skim, give up halfway through, or skip to the explanation. Because this experience can’t be duplicated once you know the explanation, take a moment to ask yourself how you feel about the paragraph. After reading the clarifying word, reread the paragraph. As you do so, please pay close attention to the shifts in your mental state and your feeling about the paragraph.
A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.
Is this paragraph comprehensible or meaningless? Feel your mind sort through potential explanations. Now watch what happens with the presentation of a single word: kite. As you reread the paragraph, feel the prior discomfort of something amiss shifting to a pleasing sense of rightness. Everything fits; every sentence works and has meaning. Reread the paragraph again; it is impossible to regain the sense of not understanding. In an instant, without due conscious deliberation, the paragraph has been irreversibly infused with a feeling of knowing.
Try to imagine other interpretations for the paragraph. Suppose I tell you that this is a collaborative poem written by a third-grade class, or a collage of strung-together fortune cookie quotes. Your mind balks. The presence of this feeling of knowing makes contemplating alternatives physically difficult.
Each of us probably read the paragraph somewhat differently, but certain features seem universal. After seeing the word kite, we quickly go back and reread the paragraph, testing the sentences against this new piece of information. At some point, we are convinced. But when and how?
The kite paragraph raises several questions central to our understanding of how we “know” something. Though each will be discussed at greater length in subsequent chapters, here’s a sneak preview.
• Did you consciously “decide” that kite was the correct explanation for the paragraph, or did this decision occur involuntarily, outside of conscious awareness?
•  What brain mechanism(s) created the shift from not knowing to knowing?
•  When did this shift take place? (Did you know that the explanation was correct before, during, or after you reread the paragraph?)
•  After rereading the paragraph, are you able to consciously separate out the feeling of knowing that kite is the correct answer from a reasoned understanding that the answer is correct?
•  Are you sure that kite is the correct answer? If so, how do you know? Copyright © 2008 by Robert A. Burton, M.D. All rights reserved.


Continues...

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Excerpted from On Being Certain by Burton, Robert Copyright © 2008 by Burton, Robert. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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