Mental footnotes: knowledge constructivism from logical thinking to personal beliefs and therapy

Abstract

The cognitive system has to carry out tasks that require mental activity, which is tiresome. Therefore, daily life demands that the system saves energy in order to be able to solve relevant problems. If we had to reason every single problem that was presented to us, our mental load and fatigue would increase immeasurably. Our minds can avoid the unnecessary waste of resources by taking a shortcut when reasoning. The output of previous reasoning turns into pieces of implicit information that constitute the meanings we give to things or circumstances, as the general framework where other reasoning occurs. These implicit meanings determine the manner we represent our environment and, therefore, our beliefs, emotions and behaviors. These mental footnotes set the manner in which we contemplate and conceive the world and we deal with reality. The better we understand these processes, the better we can control and restructure them, and even capitalize on their functioning for therapy.