The Believing Brain

The Believing Brain Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Believing Brain book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The Believing Brain

Michael Shermer
The Believing Brain Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2011-05-24
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781429972611

Get Book

The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer Pdf

The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic 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. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find 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 of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, 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 a belief matches reality.

Why People Believe Weird Things

Michael Shermer
Why People Believe Weird Things Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Holt Paperbacks
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2002-09-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 1429996765

Get Book

Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer Pdf

Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.

Believing

Michael McGuire
Believing Book PDF

Author : Michael McGuire
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2013-09-10
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781616148300

Get Book

Believing by Michael McGuire Pdf

A new book about brain chemistry, neural systems, and the formation of beliefs from the scientist who brought to light serotonin's many crucial roles in human behavior. Beliefs: What are they? How have evolution and culture led to a brain that is seemingly committed to near endless belief creation? And once established, why are most beliefs so difficult to change? Believing offers answers to these questions from the perspective of a leading neuroscientist and expert in brain-behavior research. Combining personal anecdotes and the latest research, Dr. McGuire takes the novel approach of focusing on the central and critical role of brain systems and the ways in which they interact with the environment to create and maintain beliefs. This approach yields some surprising and counterintuitive conclusions: • The brain is designed for belief creation and acceptance. • It is biased in favor of its own beliefs and is highly insensitive to disconfirming evidence. • It prefers beliefs that are pleasurable and rewarding to those that are unfavorable. • Beliefs are "afterthoughts" of unperceived brain activities; they don't cause behavior. • Our consciousness has minimal influence on the neural systems that create beliefs. Based on these observations, McGuire concludes that for the foreseeable future people will continue to hold a multitude of beliefs, many of them intransigent.

Giving the Devil His Due

Michael Shermer
Giving the Devil His Due Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2020-04-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781108489782

Get Book

Giving the Devil His Due by Michael Shermer Pdf

Explores how free speech and open inquiry are integral to science, politics, and society for the survival and progress of our species.

Brains, Buddhas, and Believing

Dan Arnold
Brains Buddhas and Believing Book PDF

Author : Dan Arnold
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2012-05-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780231518215

Get Book

Brains, Buddhas, and Believing by Dan Arnold Pdf

Premodern Buddhists are sometimes characterized as veritable "mind scientists" whose insights anticipate modern research on the brain and mind. Aiming to complicate this story, Dan Arnold confronts a significant obstacle to popular attempts at harmonizing classical Buddhist and modern scientific thought: since most Indian Buddhists held that the mental continuum is uninterrupted by death (its continuity is what Buddhists mean by "rebirth"), they would have no truck with the idea that everything about the mental can be explained in terms of brain events. Nevertheless, a predominant stream of Indian Buddhist thought, associated with the seventh-century thinker Dharmakirti, turns out to be vulnerable to arguments modern philosophers have leveled against physicalism. By characterizing the philosophical problems commonly faced by Dharmakirti and contemporary philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett, Arnold seeks to advance an understanding of both first-millennium Indian arguments and contemporary debates on the philosophy of mind. The issues center on what modern philosophers have called intentionality—the fact that the mind can be about (or represent or mean) other things. Tracing an account of intentionality through Kant, Wilfrid Sellars, and John McDowell, Arnold argues that intentionality cannot, in principle, be explained in causal terms. Elaborating some of Dharmakirti's central commitments (chiefly his apoha theory of meaning and his account of self-awareness), Arnold shows that despite his concern to refute physicalism, Dharmakirti's causal explanations of the mental mean that modern arguments from intentionality cut as much against his project as they do against physicalist philosophies of mind. This is evident in the arguments of some of Dharmakirti's contemporaneous Indian critics (proponents of the orthodox Brahmanical Mimasa school as well as fellow Buddhists from the Madhyamaka school of thought), whose critiques exemplify the same logic as modern arguments from intentionality. Elaborating these various strands of thought, Arnold shows that seemingly arcane arguments among first-millennium Indian thinkers can illuminate matters still very much at the heart of contemporary philosophy.

The Moral Arc

Michael Shermer
The Moral Arc Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2015-01-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780805096934

Get Book

The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer Pdf

Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people, and society as a whole, more moral From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics, and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In The Moral Arc, Shermer will explain how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepticism--scientific ways of thinking--have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever closer to a more just world.

Belief

James E. Alcock
Belief Book PDF

Author : James E. Alcock
Publisher : Prometheus Books
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2018-04-03
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781633884045

Get Book

Belief by James E. Alcock Pdf

An expert on the psychology of belief examines how our thoughts and feelings, actions and reactions, respond not to the world as it actually is but to the world as we believe it to be. This book explores the psychology of belief - how beliefs are formed, how they are influenced both by internal factors, such as perception, memory, reason, emotion, and prior beliefs, as well as external factors, such as experience, identification with a group, social pressure, and manipulation. It also reveals how vulnerable beliefs are to error, and how they can be held with great confidence even when factually false. The author, a social psychologist who specializes in the psychology of belief, elucidates how the brain and nervous system function to create the perceptions, memories, and emotions that shape belief. He explains how and why distorted perceptions, false memories, and inappropriate emotional reactions that sometimes lead us to embrace false beliefs are natural products of mental functioning. He also shows why it is so difficult to change our beliefs when they collide with contradictions. Covering a wide range -- from self-perception and the perceived validity of everyday experience to paranormal, religious, and even fatal beliefs--the book demonstrates how crucial beliefs are to molding our experience and why they have such a powerful hold on our behavior.

A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives

Cordelia Fine
A Mind of Its Own How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives Book PDF

Author : Cordelia Fine
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2008-06-17
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780393343007

Get Book

A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine Pdf

"Provocative enough to make you start questioning your each and every action."—Entertainment Weekly The brain's power is confirmed and touted every day in new studies and research. And yet we tend to take our brains for granted, without suspecting that those masses of hard-working neurons might not always be working for us. Cordelia Fine introduces us to a brain we might not want to meet, a brain with a mind of its own. She illustrates the brain's tendency toward self-delusion as she explores how the mind defends and glorifies the ego by twisting and warping our perceptions. Our brains employ a slew of inborn mind-bugs and prejudices, from hindsight bias to unrealistic optimism, from moral excuse-making to wishful thinking—all designed to prevent us from seeing the truth about the world and the people around us, and about ourselves.

Skeptic

Michael Shermer
Skeptic Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2016-01-12
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781627791397

Get Book

Skeptic by Michael Shermer Pdf

Collected essays from bestselling author Michael Shermer's celebrated columns in Scientific American For fifteen years, bestselling author Michael Shermer has written a column in Scientific American magazine that synthesizes scientific concepts and theory for a general audience. His trademark combination of deep scientific understanding and entertaining writing style has thrilled his huge and devoted audience for years. Now, in Skeptic, seventy-five of these columns are available together for the first time; a welcome addition for his fans and a stimulating introduction for new readers.

The Science of Good and Evil

Michael Shermer
The Science of Good and Evil Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2005-01-02
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781429996754

Get Book

The Science of Good and Evil by Michael Shermer Pdf

From bestselling author Michael Shermer, an investigation of the evolution of morality that is "a paragon of popularized science and philosophy" The Sun (Baltimore) A century and a half after Darwin first proposed an "evolutionary ethics," science has begun to tackle the roots of morality. Just as evolutionary biologists study why we are hungry (to motivate us to eat) or why sex is enjoyable (to motivate us to procreate), they are now searching for the very nature of humanity. In The Science of Good and Evil, science historian Michael Shermer explores how humans evolved from social primates to moral primates; how and why morality motivates the human animal; and how the foundation of moral principles can be built upon empirical evidence. Along the way he explains the implications of scientific findings for fate and free will, the existence of pure good and pure evil, and the development of early moral sentiments among the first humans. As he closes the divide between science and morality, Shermer draws on stories from the Yanamamö, infamously known as the "fierce people" of the tropical rain forest, to the Stanford studies on jailers' behavior in prisons. The Science of Good and Evil is ultimately a profound look at the moral animal, belief, and the scientific pursuit of truth.

Why Darwin Matters

Michael Shermer
Why Darwin Matters Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2007-04-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781429900904

Get Book

Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer Pdf

A creationist-turned-scientist demonstrates the facts of evolution and exposes Intelligent Design's real agenda Science is on the defensive. Half of Americans reject the theory of evolution and "Intelligent Design" campaigns are gaining ground. Classroom by classroom, creationism is overthrowing biology. In Why Darwin Matters, bestselling author Michael Shermer explains how the newest brand of creationism appeals to our predisposition to look for a designer behind life's complexity. Shermer decodes the scientific evidence to show that evolution is not "just a theory" and illustrates how it achieves the design of life through the bottom-up process of natural selection. Shermer, once an evangelical Christian and a creationist, argues that Intelligent Design proponents are invoking a combination of bad science, political antipathy, and flawed theology. He refutes their pseudoscientific arguments and then demonstrates why conservatives and people of faith can and should embrace evolution. He then appraises the evolutionary questions that truly need to be settled, building a powerful argument for science itself. Cutting the politics away from the facts, Why Darwin Matters is an incisive examination of what is at stake in the debate over evolution.

Heavens on Earth

Michael Shermer
Heavens on Earth Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2018-01-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781627798563

Get Book

Heavens on Earth by Michael Shermer Pdf

A scientific exploration into humanity’s obsession with the afterlife and quest for immortality from the bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans’ belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality along with utopian attempts to create heaven on earth. For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, and though no one has ever returned from such a place to report what it is really like—or that it even exists—today science and technology are being used to try to make it happen in our lifetime. From radical life extension to cryonic suspension to mind uploading, Shermer considers how realistic these attempts are from a proper skeptical perspective. Heavens on Earth concludes with an uplifting paean to purpose and progress and how we can live well in the here-and-now, whether or not there is a hereafter.

How We Believe

Michael Shermer
How We Believe Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : W H Freeman & Company
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Religion
ISBN : 071673561X

Get Book

How We Believe by Michael Shermer Pdf

Attempts to understand the balance between faith in God and scientific reason, focusing on the impact of religion in modern American society, as well as examining theories of nonbelievers in such fields as anthropology and psychology.

How We Believe

Michael Shermer
How We Believe Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 541 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2003-10-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781429996747

Get Book

How We Believe by Michael Shermer Pdf

A new edition covering the latest scientific research on how the brain makes us believers or skeptics Recent polls report that 96 percent of Americans believe in God, and 73 percent believe that angels regularly visit Earth. Why is this? Why, despite the rise of science, technology, and secular education, are people turning to religion in greater numbers than ever before? Why do people believe in God at all? These provocative questions lie at the heart of How We Believe , an illuminating study of God, faith, and religion. Bestselling author Michael Shermer offers fresh and often startling insights into age-old questions, including how and why humans put their faith in a higher power, even in the face of scientific skepticism. Shermer has updated the book to explore the latest research and theories of psychiatrists, neuroscientists, epidemiologists, and philosophers, as well as the role of faith in our increasingly diverse modern world. Whether believers or nonbelievers, we are all driven by the need to understand the universe and our place in it. How We Believe is a brilliant scientific tour of this ancient and mysterious desire.

Science Friction

Michael Shermer
Science Friction Book PDF

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2010-04-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781429900881

Get Book

Science Friction by Michael Shermer Pdf

Bestselling author Michael Shermer delves into the unknown, from heretical ideas about the boundaries of the universe to Star Trek's lessons about chance and time A scientist pretends to be a psychic for a day-and fools everyone. An athlete discovers that good-luck rituals and getting into "the zone" may, or may not, improve his performance. A historian decides to analyze the data to see who was truly responsible for the Bounty mutiny. A son explores the possiblities of alternative and experimental medicine for his cancer-ravaged mother. And a skeptic realizes that it is time to turn the skeptical lens onto science itself. In each of the fourteen essays in Science Friction, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores the very personal barriers and biases that plague and propel science, especially when scientists push against the unknown. What do we know and what do we not know? How does science respond to controversy, attack, and uncertainty? When does theory become accepted fact? As always, Shermer delivers a thought-provoking, fascinating, and entertaining view of life in the scientific age.