Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing what we know” arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason. (80)

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. (133)

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. (144)

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. (149)

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? (171)

In 1957, Stanford professor of social psychology Leon Festinger introduced the term cognitive dissonance to describe the distressing mental state in which people “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.” (249)

The more committed we are to a belief, the harder it is to relinquish, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. Instead of acknowledging an error in judgment and abandoning the opinion, we tend to develop a new attitude or belief that will justify retaining it. (258)

Although not restricted to a single area of the brain or a single definitive physiology, the most striking shared characteristic of these delusional misidentification syndromes is that the conflict between logic and a contrary feeling of knowing tends to be resolved in favor of feeling. Rather than rejecting ideas and beliefs that defy common sense and overwhelming contrary evidence, such patients end up using tortured logic to justify the more powerful sense of knowing what they know.8 (317)

“Mystical truth … resembles the knowledge given to us in sensations more than that given by conceptual thought.”4 James’s description is perfectly straightforward—with mystical states, people experience spontaneous mental sensations that feel like knowledge but occur in the absence of any specific knowledge. Felt knowledge. Knowledge without thought. Certainty without deliberation or even conscious awareness of having had a thought. (394)

The knowledge that the mystical experience is a result of mundane chemistry does not negate the nagging (and lingering) sense of the certainty of God’s existence. Note also that chloroform evoked the sensations of purity and truth without any reference to any specific idea or thought. (425)

It is now believed that this blocking of the NMDA receptor is responsible for the clinical picture of a near-death experience. (446)

LeDoux’s experiments greatly clarified the role of the amygdala in evoking a fear response without the need for any conscious awareness and recognition of the provoking stimulus.17 Other experiments have confirmed that direct stimulation of the amygdala produces the same fear response as Ledoux’s conditioning experiments. Conversely, bilateral removal of the amygdala in animals, from rats to monkeys, produces a state of utter fearlessness. (473)

Psychologists commonly divide certain feeling states into primary emotions, such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust,2 and secondary or social emotions, such as embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, and pride. (567)

There is no body of neurological literature demonstrating the isolated absence of pride or gratitude as the result of localized brain injuries. Such emotions do not appear to be primary any more than magenta is a primary color. They are the end product of other more elemental mental states. (579)

Psychologists have recently begun to consider the role of pathological certainty and pathological uncertainty as they relate to schizophrenia and OCD. (614)

By using these criteria of universality—relatively discrete anatomic localization and easy reproducibility without conscious cognitive input—the feeling of knowing and its kindred feelings should be considered as primary as the states of fear and anger. (628)

A cell might respond to a particular shape but not another. A cluster of these highly individualized neurons specific to a single visual function is referred to as a module. (815)

Your retina detects an orange-and-black fluttering. The information is sent to the primary visual cortex. Each category of module gathers its own particular data (such as the detection of vertical or horizontal motion, color, shape, and size). No single module can create a visual image. Rather the output of each flows into higher order networks within the visual association areas where it merges with a host of inputs from nonvisual circuitry—the (818)

A classical example of emergence is how termites with their tiny brains are able to construct huge mounds up to twenty-five feet in height. No termite has a clue how or why to build a mound; its brain isn’t large enough to carry the information. (843)

Somehow the interaction of lower-level capabilities produces a higher-level activity.3 The same process applies to the human brain. Each neuron is like a termite. It cannot contain a complete memory or hold an intelligent discussion. There are no superneurons, nor is there a master plan contained within each neuron. Each neuron’s DNA provides general instructions for how a cell operates and relates with other cells; it does not provide instructions for logic, reason, or poetry. And yet, out of this mass of cells comes Shakespeare and Newton. Consciousness, intentionality, purpose, and meaning all emerge from the interconnections between billions of neurons that do not contain these elements. (846)

Modularity, when combined with a schematic hierarchical arrangement of increasingly complex layers of neural networks and the concept of emergence, serves as an excellent working model for how the brain builds up complex perceptions, thoughts, and behavior. (854)

Consider the myriad components involved in the acquisition of language, ranging from the visual recognition of symbols and auditory processing of spoken sounds (phonemes) to the sorting out of nuance and implied irony. A racial epithet can be an accusation or a term of endearment, depending upon circumstance, facial expression, body language, and intonation. (Comedian George Carlin has made a career out of forcing us to hear politically loaded words from unanticipated angles.) In the interpretation of a single word, large areas of widely separated but interconnected cortex function as a behavioral unit—hence the applicability of the term module. (870)

The feeling of knowing is universal, most likely originates within a localized region of the brain, can be spontaneously activated via direct stimulation or chemical manipulation, yet cannot be triggered by conscious effort. These arguments for its inclusion as a primary brain module are more compelling than those postulated for deceit, compassion, forgiveness, altruism, or Machiavellian cunning. (882)

synesthesia is commonly thought to represent an involuntary comingling of two normally unrelated sensory modalities, such as sight and sound. Those affected experience two separate sensations as a single unit; they cannot willfully suppress the second sensory input. (893)

Synesthesia offers a startling insight: Lower-level brain modules can profoundly affect not only our ordinary sensory perceptions but also how we experience abstract symbols such as letters and numbers. If thought is the manipulation of words and symbols, we need to consider whether our very building blocks of thought might also be subject to involuntary, even genetic, influences that make each of us “private islands” of perception and thinking. (938)

But experience tells us that the feeling of knowing has a variable temporal relationship to conscious “reasoning.” (949)

To have unconditional trust that a feeling of knowing represents a justifiable conclusion, we need to know which of these three scenarios has actually occurred. Timing is everything. But what if the brain contains mechanisms that rearrange the perception of a sequence of events? What if our brains can trick us into believing that event X follows event Y, even though it actually precedes it? Sounds like a preposterous proposition, but what if this rearrangement is necessary to overcome yet other physiological barriers to the proper perception of a sequence of events? (966)

you bump into a door, the sensory inputs from your nose reach the brain sooner than those from your big toe, yet you perceive hitting the door with your entire body all at once.11 The brain adjusts for these time lags. (1046)

Here’s the windup, and here’s the thought. The listener’s decision as to the thought’s correctness will be based upon a quick glimpse of the idea leaving the other’s lips, snap judgments of body language, sighs, gestures, facial expressions, and all the various verbal and nonverbal contributions to interpretation of the spoken word. If the listener is forced to make a quick response, the decision as to the thought’s correctness will be subject to the same physiological restraints as a batter’s assessment of an incoming pitch. Nevertheless, due to the subjective backward referral of time, the listener will feel that he fully considered the idea before deciding on its correctness (the equivalent of Barry Bonds believing that he can see the ball in a quarter-sized strike zone before initiating his swing). (1092)

Semantic memories include everything from the date and time of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the number of home runs hit by Babe Ruth to your present address and social security number. These are the packets of concrete information that can be externally verified and agreed upon. (1156)

In contrast, episodic refers to the remembrance of specific episodes strung together via a narrative of first this happened, and then that happened. These are the memories that are revised by subsequent experience.1 (1159)

“I Witness” Accuracy (1162)

None of us have an instinctual belief that our memories are this fragile. Despite the proliferation of psychological studies questioning the accuracy of episodic memory recall, we cling to the belief that our pasts approximately correspond to our memories. (1171)

The all-too-seductive argument: If I can be sure of where I was born, and this feeling of knowing can be easily verified, shouldn’t I trust all my memories that feel correct? (1175)

For purposes of simplicity, let’s call thoughts that require only memorization, but no decision making, logical analysis, or reasoning, semantic thoughts. (1197)

thoughts that arise out of complex computations within the hidden layer might be seen as the equivalent of episodic memories that are continuously and subliminally undergoing revisions, augmentations, and diminutions. Like episodic memories, such thoughts require an element of perception and are subject to a variety of perceptual illusions. Since the term episodic thought is cumbersome, I have chosen the more descriptive term perceptual thought. (1199)

The general principle equally applicable to the worst cocaine addiction, stamp collecting, or idle musings is that for a behavior to persist, there must be some brain-mediated reward. (1243)

The feeling of knowing and the decision to climb the tree become linked together in the neural network labeled “what to do in the case of a charging lion.” The more powerful the experience and the more times it occurs, the greater becomes the linkage between the decision and the feeling that the decision is correct. (1247)

Feelings of strangeness and unfamiliarity can warn us that we are making a wrong turn in our thinking. (1252)

Thoughts have become more complex and abstract; much of what we think about today has no clear answer, no obvious cause-and-effect result, and isn’t easily measurable. We can never know with certainty whether decisions to invade Iraq, to restrict stem cell research, or to permit private ownership of handguns are the best decisions. The law of unforeseen consequences tells us that today’s seemingly positive result might be next decade’s catastrophe. (1255)

In order to pursue a new thought, we must feel the thought is worth pursuing before we have any supporting evidence or justification. Otherwise, we would only consider ideas we already know to be correct. But what would the reward be for a new or unique idea? We talk of the pleasure of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but this presumes that what you are acquiring is bona fide knowledge. Proceeding without any sense of a thought’s value isn’t a high-priority activity. Just watch your kid avoid his homework, complaining bitterly that studying Latin or logic is worthless. “What’s the point?” is nothing more than thought’s reward system switched to off (or running on empty if you prefer the neurochemical metaphor). (1260)

Most physiological reward systems are measured with a stopwatch, not a calendar. With fight or flight, you know pronto whether running away was the right choice. Cocaine and gambling are now rewards. No one ever listened to Bach with the goal of experiencing enjoyment in a month, or told a joke to make you laugh next year. Pleasure systems don’t have a memory; they’re now or never, measured within the time frame of synaptic transmission and neurotransmitter metabolism. (1280)

In being constantly on the lookout for the last word, they often appear as compelled and driven as the worst of addicts. And perhaps they are. Might the know-it-all personality trait be seen as an addiction to the pleasure of the feeling of knowing? (1372)

The feeling of knowing, the reward for both proven and unproven thoughts, is learning’s best friend, and mental flexibility’s worst enemy. (1411)

We are raised believing that reasonable discourse can establish the superiority of one line of thought over another. The underlying presumption is that each of us has an innate faculty of reason that can overcome our perceptual differences and see a problem from the “optimal perspective.” One goal of this book is to dispel this misconception. (1423)

LeDoux’s structural studies showing that destruction of the amygdala made animals less fearful have now been confirmed at a biochemical level. What once required gross anatomic destruction of an area of the brain can now be accomplished through precise manipulation of a single gene. (1503)

What you can’t know is how the gene affected his thoughts in undetectable ways. An additional piece of history is that the husband’s prior two marriages ended in bitter divorces with both departing wives accusing him of being cowardly, consumed with anxiety, and filled with self-doubt. His self-esteem is lower than his remaining Enron shares. The decision when to leave for the airport kicks his genetic predisposition to be fearful into overdrive, but not in a single direction. He is faced with two competing sets of disaster probabilities—getting to the airport late and missing the flight versus upsetting his new bride by revealing his cowardly neurotic ways. Both risk-reward probabilities are inputted into his hidden layer where they silently duke it out. If the fear of rejection is greater than missing the plane, the husband will quickly agree with his wife. (1532)

In the Bouchard studies, the twins expressed how they feel and what they are interested in and attracted to. Such attitudinal studies tell us what the twins want to do (under ideal circumstances), not what they will do. So many of the arguments over free will and determinism fail to make this simple distinction. Desire and action are not synonymous. (1542)

To expect that we can get others to think as we do is to believe that we can overcome innate differences that make each of our thought processes as unique as our fingerprints. (1697)

As an isolated system, thought is doomed to the perpetual “yes, but,” that arises out of not being able to know what you don’t know. Without a circuit breaker, indecision and inaction would rule the day. What is needed is a mental switch that stops infinite ruminations and calms our fears of missing an unknown superior alternative. Such a switch can’t be a thought or we would be back at the same problem. The simplest solution would be a sensation that feels like a thought but isn’t subject to thought’s perpetual self-questioning. (1711)

Most neuroscientists believe that conscious thoughts are the mere tip of a cognitive iceberg and that the vast majority of “thought” occurs outside of awareness. (1783)

Having myriad dissimilar intentions simultaneously present in consciousness would create a chaotic and confused mind; attention would be scattered among all the questions being entertained. Not having all intentions simultaneously front and center in awareness creates the illusion that some thoughts aren’t intentional, but simply “occur to us.” It would appear that evolution has chosen the uncluttered mind at the expense of stripping the feeling of intention from unconscious thoughts. (1837)

Conscious thoughts have the embedded sensation of willful effort and intention; unconscious thoughts lack this sensation. Conscious thoughts feel as if they are being thought; unconscious thoughts don’t. Unconscious thoughts that reach consciousness have been prescreened and assigned a higher likelihood of being worth pursuing than those ideas that do not reach consciousness. Unconscious thoughts with a sufficiently high calculated likelihood of correctness will be consciously experienced as feeling right. (1878)

The most on-the-money observation—that a gut feeling is a deep down conviction that occurs without any underlying sense of knowing why—is nothing more than the description of the feeling of knowing unaccompanied by the awareness of a precipitating thought or a specific line of reasoning. (1897)

Thoughts require sensory information. A disembodied mind cannot contemplate beauty or feel the differences between deep love, infatuation, and pure lust. To avoid confusion and chaos, our brains have sensory systems that selectively tell us when we are thinking a thought. These sensory systems also determine how we experience mental cause-and-effect and intentionality. And they are instrumental in imbuing our thoughts with a sense of their correctness or incorrectness. Without the embedded sensation of being on the right track, a thought wouldn’t be worth the mind it’s printed on. (1907)

We know the nature and 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. (1911)

Any concept of free will assumes that we possess a portion of mind that can rise above the biological processes that generated it. Scientific inquiry requires this same piece of mind to objectively weigh evidence. Without this belief, the feeling of knowing wouldn’t feel like knowing. Every time it arose, we would ask the same question: How do we know that this sense of knowledge can be trusted? Talking about the impossibility of a rational mind generates this general category in the same way that an atheist needs the concept of God in order to refute it. In short, relinquishing the idea of pure reason goes against the grain of how we lead our lives. (1936)

conscious perception takes longer than unconscious reaction times. Combine this observation with the role of the amygdala in unconscious fear responses, and you have the makings of the hugely popular theory of emotional intelligence. (1964)

Emotional intelligence is a different way of being smart. It includes knowing what your feelings are and using your feelings to make good decisions in life. It’s being able to manage distressing moods well and control impulses. (1973)

Though useful in emphasizing that unrecognized foul moods and emotions can impact clarity of thought, the theory of emotional intelligence ultimately sidesteps the crucial question of how we determine whether our thoughts are free of perceptual illusions and unsuspected biases. And the repeated assertion of a rational mind sounds suspiciously like a disembodied mind capable of pure thought without inputs from bodily and mental sensations. (1990)

Wilson suggests that we are better off by combining introspection with observing how others react to us, and deducing the otherwise inaccessible nature of our minds from their responses. If others see us differently than we see ourselves, we need to incorporate this alternative view of ourselves into our personal narrative. He warns us that introspection without looking outward at how others see us can actually be counterproductive. (2002)

All thoughts—the trivial, the brilliant, the mundane, the profound, the catastrophic, and truly dangerous—percolate up from the unconscious (the hidden layer). The issue isn’t whether or not unconscious thoughts can be of great value, but in sorting out those that are from those that aren’t. (2067)

We have no mechanism for establishing the accuracy of a line of reasoning until it has produced a testable idea. (2081)

This discussion isn’t about whether or not unconscious cognition should play a role in our decision making; without unconscious cognition there wouldn’t be any conscious decision making. The issue I have with gut feeling, intuition, and split-second decisions is in believing that we can know when to trust them without having any criteria for determining this trust. A feeling that a decision is right is not the same as providing evidence that it is right. Which brings us to the discussion of the relationship between the myth of the autonomous rational mind and our understanding of objectivity. (2111)

The less obvious error is equating clarity with certainty. Clarity is an involuntary mental sensation, not an objective determination. Combining the limits of perception with recognition that the sensation of clarity of mind isn’t a conscious choice should be enough to lay the idea of pure objectivity to rest. (2157)

Stephen Jay Gould comes as close as is possible to a reasonable middle road: “Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny.” (2161)

Our reluctance to face the problems of the rational mind stems in part from the feeling that the mind isn’t of the same category as the body. We don’t expect to jump twenty feet high or to swim underwater for a week; we can easily feel our physical limitations. But we don’t feel the same limits on our thoughts. For example, you feel free to accept or reject this paragraph. Acknowledging all the subliminal factors that influence this decision doesn’t override the more powerful feeling that you are in control of your thoughts. In essence, we are programmed to believe in bootstrap theories of improving our minds. Our mental limitations prevent us from accepting our mental limitations. (2188)

Good science is more than the mechanics of research and experimentation. Good science requires that scientists look inward—to contemplate the origin of their thoughts. The failures of science do not begin with flawed evidence or fumbled statistics; they begin with personal self-deception and an unjustified sense of knowing. Once you adopt the position that personal experience is the “proof of the pudding,” reasoned discussion simply isn’t possible. Good science requires distinguishing between “felt knowledge” and knowledge arising out of testable observations. “I am sure” is a mental sensation, not a testable conclusion. (2291)

Whether or not it is appropriate to use the word faith to describe a feeling of “now I know why I’m here,” or “this must be what it’s all about,” it is impossible to overlook the shared qualities of the feeling of knowing, a sense of faith, and feelings of purpose and meaning. All serve as both motivation and reward at the most basic level of thought. (2426)

We don’t browbeat depressed patients to “get over it” because we are willing to accept that brain chemistry aberrations somehow result in a loss of a sense of meaning. But when a sense of purpose and meaning is present, it isn’t normally described as arising out of properly functioning neural mechanisms. Instead, purpose and meaning are discussed in metaphysical or religious terms. (2455)

How different the science-religion controversy would be if we acknowledged that a deeply felt sense of purpose is as necessary as hunger and thirst—all are universally necessary for survival and homeostasis. How we express these sensations will be a matter of personal taste and predilection. (2500)

To expect well-reasoned arguments to easily alter personal expressions of purpose is to misunderstand the biology of belief. If there is to be any rapprochement between science and religion, both sides must accept this basic limitation. (2510)

Randomness is an observation; it isn’t evidence against a higher-order design. If I want my garden to look like a jungle, my best chance is to let the plants crawl all over one another. The garden may look like utter chaos, but that was my intent. Perhaps we are a well-designed experiment in futility. (2548)

The message at the heart of this book is that the feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction, and certainty aren’t deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations that happen to us. (2971)

To say that evolution is extremely likely rather than absolutely certain doesn’t reduce the strength of its argument, at the same time as it serves a more fundamental purpose. (2989)

Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. (3041)