ABSTRACT
Chapter 2, Mind and epistemology, seeks ways to describe the relationship between the physical ‘outside’ world and the psychological ‘inside’ world. It poses a double question: (a) Is the human mind so determined by its physical and cultural environment that it can be considered to be governed by universal laws or (b) are human minds so different from each other that psychology cannot give an account of our perceptions and behavior by exclusive recourse to general laws? The chapter sketches the origin of the history of the modern understanding of subjectivity and objectivity and how this history connects to the context of modern science and the distinction between natural sciences and human sciences and, further, to the contexts of knowledge in general. The aim of the chapter is to examine how the understanding of subjective experience and objective knowledge affect current mental health care praxis and research. Our understanding of the relation between what is real and what is false, that is, truth and fiction, and of what it is to be a human being in everyday life is taken up.
