Building our Inner World

Chapter 5 continues the discussion about the growth of knowledge as our minds construct our inner version of the world. For knowledge to be built, used or modified on a given occasion requires online mental processing. Knowledge can be seen as a combination of different types of representation, distributed across different stores and associated with one another in the form of schemas. Calling something a ‘representation’ means it is a particular chunk of information (knowledge) that, in most cases, has been created and stored as a result of experience. This normally means combinations of representations which can vary greatly in complexity. Ultimately, although much is hidden from awareness, our knowledge at any given moment is contained in the sum total of what is currently contained in all of our current schemas. Present at birth, there exists in each system a set of ready-made representations called ‘primitives’, its ‘biological starter package’. To create and continually modify its inner world and make sense of the complex, fluctuating and dynamic flow of evidence, the mind's systems are continually interacting, each contributing its specialised knowledge, and using a potentially infinite number of associative schemas to meet this challenge.