How Do I Know if I'm a Pogo?

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Nee: All of your explanations make perfect sense whether or not they're true as you know I can't attest to. But if you just imagine all of the types of inputs that affect your decision making from the very learning of language is taught to you by a parent, by school, by friends, et cetera,. different experiences. So you take their myriad factors involved in any single thought or decision. Now they have to be instantiated in the brain in some mechanism and it's thought that they're somehow embedded. And then in order for that idea to reach consciousness, there has to be some reasonable likelihood that the idea is correct.

Neurologist and author Robert Burton talks about his book, On Being Certain, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Burton explores our need for certainty and the challenge of being skeptical about what our brain tells us must be true. Where does what Burton calls "the feeling of knowing" come from? Why can memory lead us astray? Burton claims that our reaction to events emerges from competition among different parts of the brain operating below our level of awareness. The conversation includes a discussion of the experience of transcendence and the different ways humans come to that experience.