Believing Brain From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them As Truths

Name: Believing Brain From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them As Truths
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9781250008800

ISBN-10: 1250008808

ISBN-13: 9781250008800

Edition: N/A

Authors: Michael Shermer

List price: $25.99

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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 begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning, forming beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, accelerating the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop. In The Believing…

Book details

List price: $25.99
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication date: 8/7/2012
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 400
Size: 5.65" wide x 8.28" long x 1.08" tall
Weight: 0.748
Language: English

Michael Shermer is the director of the Skeptics Society and the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology. He teaches science, technology, and evolutionary thought in the Cultural Studies Program at Occidental College.



Prologue: I Want to Believe



Journeys of Belief



Mr. D'Arpino's Dilemma



Dr. Collins's Conversion



A Skepticï¿½s Journey



The Biology of Belief



Patternicity



Agenticity



The Believing Neuron



Belief in Things Unseen



Belief in the Afterlife



Belief in God



Belief in Aliens



Belief in Conspiracies



Belief in Things Seen



Politics of Belief



Confirmations of Belief



Geographies of Belief



Cosmologies of Belief


Epilogue: The Truth Is Out There


Notes


Acknowledgments


Index