What Is a Belief?

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A belief would be a cognitive process in which it was associated with a strong sense of its being feeling right. It has nothing to do with the underlying thought. The stronger the sensation that is correct, the more likely it is to colour other beliefs and they spread out like ripple ongus on a pond buttat.

In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits conclusions are not conscious choices, and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are "sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason."

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