"On Being Certain": Interview with Robert Burton, MD (BSP 43)

Episode 43 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Robert A Burton, MD, author of On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, which I discussed in Episode 42. Dr. Burton tells us what inspired him to write this book and we explore some of the implications of the fact that what he calls the "feeling of knowing" comes from our unconscious, including the fact that it is not as reliable as it feels.

Listen to Episode 43 of the Brain Science Podcast

Download Transcript of this episode.

Show Notes and Links

Robert A Burton, MD

• Mind Reader blog on Salon.com


• On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not

Previous Episodes of the Brain Science Podcast:

• Episode 42: Part 1 of our discussion of On Being Certain


• Episode 13: Unconscious Decisions-featuring Blink by Malcom Gladwell


• Episode 15: Interview with Read Montague about unconscious decisions

Other scientists/writers mentioned in this episode:

• Benjamin Libet: important experiments showing that unconscious signals precede our awareness of deciding to act


• Timothy Wilson: Strangers to Ourselves


• John Searle: philosopher, Mind: A Brief Introduction


• David Bohm: physicist, Thought as a System

Other terms mentioned in the interview:

Cotard's Syndrome: when the patient believes they do not exist or that they are dead

cognitive dissonance: a mismatch between what one believes and what the evidence supports

Listen to Episode 43 of the Brain Science Podcast

Download Transcript of this episode.

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Comments

[Jean-Michel Abrassart]

Hello,

Very fascinating stuff. I'm really surprise that philosophers are not more interrested in that kind of subject, because it seems very important for the field of epistemology.

Well, keep up the good work,

Sincerely,

[Tyler Rickards]

Hello -
A very interesting podcast and topic in general...I've only listened through the two "on being certain" podcasts once, but gather that kind of surprised that the word "metacognition" never entered into the discussion - or thinking about thinking...or, more specifically, thinking about ones memory (metamemory) or performance in general. I've been a part of some projects in classes during my undergrad career that examine how cognitive performance is evaluated by one's self - in other words, we looked at if you could perform well and think you're doing poorly, or if you could do poorly and think you're doing well. One paper even suggests that persons with Korsakoff Syndrome and Alzheimers differ in that persons with KS had more difficulty regarding insight into their memory deficiency, while both (AD and KS) showed a cognitive deficit in memory....this tells me that the area more affected by korsakoff's syndrome - the frontal lobes - may partially "house" or at least greatly influence one's ability to evaluate their own performance (i.e. memory) INDEPENDENT of cognitive ability... or that you can have one (metamemory) without the other ("actual" memory). Just a thought that came to me listening to the first episode, especially - while this ability is probably not localized, it's probably something that requires a normally-functioning frontal lobe. This "thinking about thinking" "on being certain" certainly is not an easy matter!

Here's the citation for that paper I mentioned -
Shimamura, A.P., & Squire, L.R. (1986). Memory and Metamemory: A Study of the Feeling-
of-Knowing Phenomenon in Amnesic Patients. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 452-460.

Thanks so much for the podcasts! Neat stuff for someone looking to get into a Clinical Neuropsych graduate program, like myself!!!

Tyler.

[docartemis]

Tyler,

Thank you for sharing your references.

For more on Meta-cognition or "thinking about thinking" stayed tuned for episode 43, which will be out in a few days.

Ginger Campbell, MD