A multilayer perspective on human cognition: a speculative overview

Abstract

This paper contains some ideias about a new born discipline called Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. The main foundations of this discipline are the following: (1) A new model of Phychopathology that can be constructed using some notions from Connectionism. (2) The relation between quantitative deviation at the synaptical level and qualitative pathological sensation at the mental level common in clinical psychiatry. (3) Connectionist archietectures may serve as intereating algorithms to explain this relation. (4) The relation between the mental and the physical must be explained not in terms of dispositions but in termo f a mechanism that internalizes folk psychology and intentional idioms. (5) In such a mechanism things happen according to the laws of physics but the sensation is that in the upper mental and sociological levels things such as beliefs and freedom really exist. If this is a mistake from the physical point of view it is a pre-condition of constructing social man. According to this view conscious phenomena, individuality and mental categories are not descriptions or interpretations outside any a cognitive system, but are absolutely necessary concepts that sustain the deep structures of human cognition.