Book review: On Being Certain, by Robert A. Burton


Robert A. Burton

ON BEING CERTAIN

Believing you are right even when you're not

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Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
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I suppose I should start with an admission: the position that
Burton takes in this book is close to one I've held myself for
some time so I am naturally well disposed towards his central
idea. To put this in the briefest possible form, it is that
feelings of certainty can come to be attached to beliefs that
are manifestly false. Burton describes the resulting
psychological state as the feeling of knowing.

If this sounds odd, recall that there are other examples of
situations where one is sure that something is the case although
it isn't. One which many people have experienced is déjà vu, in
which they have the strong feeling that they have been in a
place before although they haven't. This leads some to believe
in reincarnation, but it almost certainly arises because the
'familiarity' function in the brain is being triggered
inappropriately. Such experiences are within the normal range,
but there are also abnormal states, such as those due to
temporal lobe epilepsy, in which sufferers feel a sense of
overwhelming fear although they cannot say what it is they are
afraid of. The writer George Borrow was prey to this and
describes it vividly in his book The Romany Rye.

Burton's suggestion is that the feeling of knowing is similar to
these unusual experiences and 'most likely originates within a
localized area of the brain, can be spontaneously activated via
direct stimulation or chemical manipulation, yet cannot be
triggered by conscious effort'. We cannot will belief; it is
something that happens to us. Burton refers to this hypothetical
brain area as a module. It is one among many; Burton sees the
brain as composed of numerous interlocking modules, which work
together in a hierarchical manner -- to give the experience of
vision, for example.

Why has this module arisen during evolution? To account for
this, Burton invokes the idea of reward centres in the brain,
which are believed to be involved in addictions. Abstract
thought is difficult, so the 'feeling of knowing' module evolved
because it provided a sense of reward for successfully
completing a train of thought. Certainty feels good and this
motivates us to pursue abstract thinking, which might otherwise
be an unappealing task. 'We know the quality of our thoughts via
feelings, not reason. Feelings such as certainty, conviction,
rightness and wrongness, clarity, and faith arise out of
involuntary mental sensory systems that are integral and
inseparable components of the thoughts that they qualify.'

The problem we have, however, is that this feeling of certainty
can arise even when the conclusion that has been reached is
faulty. And the resulting conviction is extremely strong. When
someone is overwhelmed by the feeling of certainty it is all but
impossible to shake their belief by argument. Burton illustrates
this with numerous examples, such as doctors who ignore evidence
that their treatments are ineffective because they 'know', from
their own experience, that they are right. We should resist
this. Even sceptics can fall into the trap if they feel certain
about their own scepticism. All 'truths' are provisional. Burton
hopes, perhaps rather optimistically, that both science and
religion can come to recognize this.

I am not sure that Burton's 'certainty module' will be shown to
exist, but there is no doubt that the phenomenon of an
overwhelming sense of conviction leading to erroneous unshakable
belief is real. This is a well-argued book and the style is
accessible to readers with little previous knowledge of the
topics it deals with. My only reservation is that some of the
examples are taken from baseball and will be all but
incomprehensible to most Europeans - certainly to this European.
And I fared only a little better with his obsession with poker,
which I found almost equally impenetrable. But one can skirt
round these things without too much difficulty.

24 September 2008
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%T On Being Certain
%S Believing you are right even when you're not
%A Robert A. Burton
%I St Martin's Press
%C New York
%D 2008
%G ISBN 13:978-0-312-35920-1
%P xii + 256pp
%K psychology


--
Anthony Campbell - ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
and sceptical articles)

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