Illusions of Certainty

<p>This book condemns the certainties which pervade Western societies whether about innate rights ethics or socially acceptable behavior because a close examination of our powers of reasoning shows all such certainties to be illusory; and because illusions like mirages lead us astray. It asks what constitutes the acts of thinking and reasoning and examines the neurobiology involved subjectivity - its origins and unavoidability - objectivity and its limited achievability - and the pervasive ambiguity of the language of ideas.</p><p><br></p><p>It highlights flaws in the concept of truth; shows how deductive logic itself contains the seeds of failure to produce certainty how inductive logic yields only probabilities and that neither pattern of logic is how we generally reason.</p><p><br></p><p>The book demonstrates that undue certainty spawns evils which threaten social stability.</p><p><br></p><p>A new list of what constitutes logical thought emerges. We consider approaches of which logic is part but not the entirety - common sense pragmatism judgment and wisdom. We ask to whom might we listen - philosophers the wise or ourselves.</p><p><br></p><p>Finally the survival instinct is identified as the biological basis of our ideas about morality political systems and the like. How a secular morality might be constructed and what an ideology-free society might be like are considered. </p>