The biology of skepticism ...

... The certainty epidemic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I confess I am not sure that "certainty and similar states of 'knowing what we know' arise out of primary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of rationality or reason."

(Italics mine.) For note that "Proust's taste of a madeleine triggered a memory that involved visual, auditory, olfactory and gustatory cortices -- the multisensory cortical representations of a complex memory." The madeleine works as a catalyst and the memories are of what really happened. My point is that the experience cannot be reduced to biochemistry, though biochemistry obviously figures in it.