Home > Author > Robert A. Burton
1 " Compassion, empathy, and humility can only arise out of recognizing that our common desires are differently expressed. "
― Robert A. Burton , On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
2 " Stephen Jay Gould offered this practical compromise: “In science, ‘fact’ can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.”16” The key phrase is provisional assent. We can strive for objectivity; we cannot reach the shores of dispassionate observation. The problem is that to play according to the rules of scientific method, we must concede the possibility that we cannot know if one day contrary evidence might appear and overthrow a cherished theory. Faith-driven arguments, by invoking irrefutable divine authority that will always be right, do not have to make this concession. "
3 " 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. "
― Robert A. Burton
4 " Though not necessarily aware of when we feel purpose and meaning, we are nearly always aware of the sickening feeling when we don't possess them. This isn't an intellectual misapprehension; it is a gut sense of disorientation and a loss of personal direction. Rarely are brute mental effort and self-help pep talks able to rekindle the missing feeling. For most of us, we simply wait patiently, knowing from past experience that the feeling will return in its own sweet time . . . Of particular interest is [Tolstoy's] conclusion as to the inability of science and reason to provide a personal sense of meaning. "
5 " Dawkins conveniently illustrates the rationalist's dilemma: How do you articulate a personal sense of purpose when you intellectually have concluded that the world is pointless? What is the purpose of pointing out pointlessness? What does it mean to find purpose in understanding pointlessness? Once again we are back at the conflict between Dawkins' intellect (the world is pointless) and his mental sensation of purpose (I will show others that faith is irrational). To understand the intensity of this felt purpose, Google Dawkins' bio and speaking engagements. His near-evangelical effort to convince the faithful of the folly of their convictions has the same zealous ring as those missionaries who feel it is their duty to convert the heathens. "
6 " We see only what we know. —Goethe "
7 " Imagine how different dialogue might be with future generations raised on the idea that there are biological constraints on our ability to know what we know. To me, that is our only hope. "
8 " The history of science is the back-and-forth movement of trial-and-error advances and retreats, punctuated by moments of brilliance and marred by periods of excess. "
― Robert A. Burton , A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves
9 " If the evidence is strong enough, you are convinced that there is no other reasonable answer. Your resulting sense of certainty feels like the only logical and justifiable conclusion to a conscious and deliberate line of reasoning. But modern biology is pointing in a different direction. "
10 " The brain, having never taken a course in philosophy, is the ultimate pragmatist; what is true is what works. Like any successful oddsmaker, the brain is a predictor of probabilities, not a stickler for the perfect answer. "
11 " 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. "
12 " If a conservationist has more stathmin, less risk-taking gene, and the pro-drilling advocate has less stathmin, more risk-taking gene, how can the two have a reasonable dialogue? "
13 " And yet they persist in the belief that everyone should draw the same conclusion if given the same information, as though reason operated according to an obligatory physics, like the optics of an eye. These book club members aren’t alone. 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. "
14 " the accuracy of your research will always be limited by the quality of your tools. "
15 " the interaction of conscious thought and the involuntary feeling of knowing determines how we feel we know what we know. "
16 " 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. Put hunches, gut feelings, and intuitions into the suggestion box. Let empiric methods shake out the good from the bad suggestions. "
17 " feeling of knowing and its kindred feelings should be considered as primary as the states of fear and anger. "
18 " the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren’t. "
19 " Hiring the mind as a consultant for understanding the mind feels like the metaphoric equivalent of asking a known con man for his self-appraisal and letter of reference. "
20 " Multiple fMRI studies have shown that a localized area of the brain—the ventral medial prefrontal cortex—will show increased activity when we have thoughts and mental images about ourselves. "
