A few months ago I finished a book "On being certain", which I thought I should write something about before I forget my thoughts. It's an interesting read. The fundamental message - although hard to articulate in a limited space - is that knowing your "right" about something (presumably anything) is a "feeling" the emerges at least in part from your sub-conscious mind. The author rejects the idea that there is a rational/logical mind (the conscious) that competes with the emotional/unconsicous mind, which is an idea that dates back at least as far as Plato. Instead, "being certain" that you are right about something (the sun is yellow, 1+1=2, god exists) is always a feeling the emerges from a part of the mind that is shielded from introspective access. We can't think about "why" it is true - we just feel that it must be. This seems at first a bit esoteric, but I think it says something very deep about human thought. We come to accept that things are "true" because we observe that they are consistent with a view of the world that makes sense to us. Thus, if I have 1 apple and "add" another apple, I will have 2 apples. This "makes sense" when someone tells us this fact, because it is consistent with our perceptions.We are certain of this fact - and ultimately other facts - because they accord with a accumulated world-view that we inhert from what we see and what others tell us is true.
When we assess new facts, these are evaluated by our sub-concious mind to see how they accord with the constellation of other facts that we feel to be true. This emerges in the concious thought as a "feeling" of correctness for the puntive fact. This is an observation that is not in the book, but flows logically to me. We don't have introspective access to this process of evaluation, so we cannot know if the new fact is true, but instead get a feeling that it might be consistent with other facts that we had accepted in the past. If this is the structure of thought, it explains the stickyness of our beliefs. We cannot alter one set of beliefs easily without upsetting a delicate balance in our minds of other things that we feel must be true, even if we don't have introspective access to what the constellation of these other beliefs are.
When we assess new facts, these are evaluated by our sub-concious mind to see how they accord with the constellation of other facts that we feel to be true. This emerges in the concious thought as a "feeling" of correctness for the puntive fact. This is an observation that is not in the book, but flows logically to me. We don't have introspective access to this process of evaluation, so we cannot know if the new fact is true, but instead get a feeling that it might be consistent with other facts that we had accepted in the past. If this is the structure of thought, it explains the stickyness of our beliefs. We cannot alter one set of beliefs easily without upsetting a delicate balance in our minds of other things that we feel must be true, even if we don't have introspective access to what the constellation of these other beliefs are.
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