The nature of doubt and a new puzzle about belief, doubt, and confidence

A neuroanatomical investigation of belief and doubt

Philosophical and scientific investigations into the nature of belief and knowledge are ancient, extending back to the beginnings of rational thought. It is not until the last few decades that we have been able to peer into and examine the organ of belief, the brain. Neuroanatomical perspectives have begun to address the long-standing questions of epistemology by identifying specific neural reg...

Verbal expressions of confidence and doubt.

The development of a taxonomy of expressions expressing the degree of confidence or certainty felt in the correctness of one's judgments, knowledge, or beliefs is reported. 30 phrases expressing confidence and doubt were rated by 96 British participants on a 7-point scale to indicate how much confidence or doubt they felt each phrase expressed. The expressions were rank ordered, based on their ...

Faith, Hope and Doubt

Doubting one’s doubt: A formula for confidence?

People feel, think, and act differently when doubt rather than confidence is accessible. A traditional perspective on the accessibility of doubt holds that multiple sources of doubt activation should lead to increased levels of uncertainty. In contrast, we find that under some conditions two sequential sources of doubt activation result in decreased levels of uncertainty. We suggest that this f...

Doubt about antidepressant-like effect

Dear Editor: Extensive studies have measured antidepressant-like effects of chemical compounds to discover new drugs for depression treatment or to clarify the molecular mechanisms of depression. Most useful anti-depressants including tricyclics, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (NRIs), serotonin and noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitors (SNRIs), a...