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by: Robert Burton  List Price: $24.95 Amazon.com's Price: $16.47 You Save: $8.48 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 153.4 EAN: 9780312359201 ISBN: 0312359209 Label: St. Martin's Press Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 272 Publication Date: February 05, 2008 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Release Date: February 05, 2008 Studio: St. Martin's Press Related Items:
Editorial Review: 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - One of three recent great books on our weird mindsI rank this second among my favorite three books this year on the topic of the oddities of normal human thinking - right after How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business and just above Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. How Burton treats the issue of certainty is an interesting compliment to how Hubbard treats uncertainty in How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business. Burton looks at situations ... Read More Rating:  - Lacks depthIn the initial chapters of this book, Robert Burton explains that knowing is primarily a feeling; a feeling that something is certain even if we have evidence to the contrary. He then proceeds to briefly discuss artificial neural networks, used later to construct the metaphor of "the hidden layer," which, he goes on to claim, is "the interface between incoming sensory data and a final perception..." This may well be true, but he doesn't provide adequate evidence in support. Basically what he says is ... Read More Rating: - I am certainI try to keep up with brain research and read everything I can to help me out of the old psychology paradigm and into the new neuroscience understanding of what makes us tick. This book is a wonderful contribution to some of the stuff in our hidden layer of "knowing." I recommend it highly to anyone curious about their own biases which are so easily justified by the conscious mind. This could be called the Gibson behavior. Too many of us seem to cling to little understood bad ideas. Buy this book, it ... Read More Rating: - I can't be certain you'll love this book, but I sure did.As an avid reader of authors such as Stephen Pinker (How the Mind Works), Malcolm Gladwell (Blink), Richard Restak (The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own) and Timothy Wilson (Strangers to Ourselves), I found Burton's book On Being Certain a riveting read. Trying to understand how the mind works feels to me as if we are putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle, knowing that we only have 20 or 30% of the pieces. On Being Certain provides a key piece that for me shifted all the others into a more meaningful pattern. ... Read More Rating: - Well thought outLike another reviewer, I am often amazed how people can be "certain" of a massive outcome when there is no humanly possible way they could know everything they need to know to be certain. This proves true for both those of a theistic mindset and those of an atheistic mindset. I can understand the agnostic's honesty that he simply doesn't know, but I cannot fathom the theist who says his idea of God is perfect and there's no way it is flawed or the atheist who says there is definitely no God and there's no ... Read More 
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