what we know versus what we experience – Niall McLaren, author of ‘Humanizing Madness: Psychiatry and the Cognitive Neurosciences’
Written on August 13, 2008
“Computer science helps psychiatrist Niall McLaren explain mental disorders”
excerpt:
Dr McLaren says, ‘Like computer processing, a substantial part of human mental life consists of the silent, rapid manipulation of information.
‘Normal mental function falls quite readily into two distinct realms, the phenomenal or experiential, and the psychological or knowledge-based.
‘The differences between what we know and what we experience is exclusive: knowledge is acquired gradually and can be conveyed to another person, whereas the phenomenal contents arrive immediately and are wholly private experiences.”
…
Dr McLaren says, ‘So my theory is that the mind has two irreducibly mental components, cognition and conscious experience, which together account for the whole of mental life.”
Dr. McLaren is the author of Humanizing Madness: Psychiatry and the Cognitive Neurosciences.
Filed in: cognitive science,consciousness,mind.
