Calendar Review
Robert Burton, M.D.
How do we know what we know?
3/10/2008 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Free
Council Chambers
420 Litho Street
Sausalito, California 94965
Robert Burton, MD, neurologist and author of the Salon.com neuroscience and popular culture feature, Mind Reader.
How do we know what we know?
Burton will discuss his new book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, a revolutionary look at how we know what we know. Drawing from personal case studies and recent neuroscience advances, as well as such far-ranging subject material as the physics of baseball, high-stakes poker, and popular discussions of gut feelings and the nature of intuition, On Being Certain systematically demonstrates that despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing what we know” are sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason.