Waterstones The Believing Brain
567 ratings
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Price: £12.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: Synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist and science historian, Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. Using sensory data that flow in through the senses, the brain naturally looks for and finds patterns - and then infuses those patterns with meaning, forming beliefs. Once beliefs are formed, our brains subconsciously seek out confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop. In The Believing Brain, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not our belief matches reality.
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9781780335292
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9781780335292
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Author: J. Taylor
Rating: 5
Review: Shermer's central message: "People form beliefs before they form explanations for them" is a real game changer, but not an intuitive conclusion. However, this message is well justified by experiment. It has profound implications for how intelligent people can hold opposite (sometimes ridiculous) opinions. Many great authors have given insight into belief generation and self deception, including Shermer himself. In my opinion this 406 page book now usurps the rest because I find it the most comprehensive and wonderfully compelling account of belief. It is (crucially) grounded in neuroscience experiments - Chapter 6 of 14, for which I admit command of high school biology makes easier reading. Criticism of "The Believing Brain" would centre around the amount of material openly borrowed from other popular science publications: In this sense, many ideas are less original, but I think completely necessary to achieve a book which properly covers the subject without leaving obvious gaps. Certainly Shermer is well read - he writes competently on everything from theology to cosmology. People who should buy this book are those who can spare a couple of weeks to read it properly and whose lives have been affected by absurd beliefs which really need concrete explanation. People who should avoid it are those who reject the scientific approach as the unrivalled way of sorting fact from fiction, as they might firmly believe the book to be falsely premised before making up an explanation as to why!
Author: Niall O'Connor
Rating: 2
Review: The author, because he has become happy with portraying himself as an expert on belief, seeks to impose a degree of finitude on the subject. This is something that belief, sometimes willed, sometimes the product of unconscious forces, sometimes core, sometimes peripheral, sometimes the result of bio-cultural adaptation, sometimes the product of and merely held in place by the relationship that it maintains with a particular cultural context, does not easily lend itself to. What is missing; well, where is the anthropological perspective of where are beliefs come from (rituals etc; beliefs as a bio-cultural adaptation); where is Jung on groups and hereding; where is Quine on the fact that our beliefs cohere; where is the neuroscience pointing to the fact that our beliefs are more often that not a product of our fears - we make the leap of faith because we fear empty spaces. Where is the fact that we make distinctions and reach conclusions because of unconscious motivations and accordingly hold non-conscious beliefs. The notions that humans (mainly because they fear ambiguity and are always having to make decisions on the back of incomplete information) structuralise, systemise and seek patterns where there are none are not knew: "The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate." Francis Bacon. “But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky. An act always misunderstands itself (Lacan). The individual is always mistaken. (Emerson). The author states that beliefs come first and the reasons for belief follow; this is of course essentialist nonsense - The belief is quite often a consequence of my act of accepting the evidence at hand. The author would also perhaps have done well to look at something like BPD - and the way in which primitive egos are prone to fragmentation and splitting because of the fears that result when the rug (of beliefs) is threatened and the way in which mentalisation goes about constructing strong frameworks of belief. Belief is back in vogue - somebody has recently written a book telling us that they can be changed in ten minutes - although he too falls in to many of the traps outlined above. It is easy when you see yourself as an expert on something to fall into the trap of systemising in an over-determing way and producing over-reaching conclusions. Belief is an untotalisable multiplicity that does not sit well in a box constructed by an author who seeks refuge in the safety of finite reasoning.
