“Yes, I’m certain of that” is often taken to be an assurance that the speaker really knows that the attested fact or opinion is correct. But it’s not clear that a feeling of really knowing something is a good predictor of really knowing something, as discussed in “On Being Certain: An Overview,” at LDS Science Review. The post is a review of Robert Burton’s book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not.” The post implicitly suggests we should be more modest in phrasing our claims and arguments. The application to religious discussion seems obvious, but the critique applies to every topic where people often feel they really know.

Here’s a nice summary from the post at LDS Science Review:

Burton argues that we should split thoughts into two components: the information of the thought, and the brain’s unconscious assessment of the thought which comes in the form of a feeling. Viewed in this way, the feeling does not, in itself, constitute evidence of correctness or incorrectness. This makes sense; we’ve all had the experience of being quite certain about something only to be confronted with incontrovertible evidence that we were wrong.