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Because as much as I took (and in some ways still take) issue with our attempt to do away with the idea of "mental illness", I am totally on board with both the reorganization of our ideas on the scientific method (though I agree with jrieders above that perhaps this is just semantics, that it is generally accepted that whatever we say today, and whatever we "prove," may of course be false, that we are always trying to understand things less incorrectly) and with the idea of the brain/mind as both a parser and creator of reality.

In today's (tomorrow's?) New York Times the Modern Love column is about how someone with a frontal lobe injury tries to reconcile his current reality with his past reality, not fully able to understand the world in the ways he used to, or others do ... And I think we all do this to varying degrees. Perhaps it is partially because I write fiction, but I think so much of our reality is based entirely on how we percieve it. Additionally, I always find memory studies fascinating -- how likely it is that we will misremember events, make up events, how easily we can be influenced to remember things differently. One of the studies I have always found particularly interesting is the one in which people created memories of interactions with Bugs Bunny at Disney World -- despite the fact that Bugs is not a Disney character.

I also think our perceptions of reality are very much culturally -- or subjectively -- based.  A friend often tells the story of taking some sort of iq test when she was younger, and being shown a picture of a three-legged table. 

"What is wrong with this picture?" she was asked, and later it was brought to her mother's attention that she hadn't mentioned the missing leg.

"Of course she didn't," her mother had responded ... In their house, they had a lot of modern furniture, including a three-legged coffee table. 

Perhaps slightly differing from Paul, but in the same vein, I think that regardless of whether or not shared perception is an example of objective reality, or simply a brain construct, there is something important about life as a social being as sharing with others a perception that reality is shared. There will always be variations in the things we are sure! happened, and yet both comfort and reassurance are derived from a sense of a shared reality.

I also read the Powers book last year, and in a lot of ways Capgras reminded me of my own grandmother's changing perception of reality with early alzheimers (not uncommon) ... A year or so before she was diagnosed, she became very agitated because she and my grandfather were living in a home that was an exact replica of their real home in every way, but that was not their home. Every aspect of it was the same, but she was positive it was the wrong home. My father would try to question her, first just to get her to see she was wrong, and then just to ask why, if everything about her "new" home was exactly the same, she cared if they had moved. Couldn't she live the same life in this replica of her home? But of course her agitation continued. Maybe she was right, in a sense, just as in "The Echo Maker", what does it mean to be the same person everyday? Aren't we each just our own constant reinterpretation of events? Maybe our houses *are* different everyday ... But if our brain isn't comforting itself with this thought, what use is it?

I think that in creating narratives, our minds often strive to jive with others -- to make connections in shared perceptions or communal cues. Often people who have traumatic brain injuries do explain the world differently (and perhaps in ways no less correct), but they also often feel frustrated, maybe vaguely aware that their perception is a bit off kilter, maybe just less able to make their narrative comforting. I am more than happy to decide that being mentally healthy means feeling able to construct a personal narrative that is bolstering and personally sensical. In a way, the goal of our brain is not necessarily to get reality "less wrong", but to make our lives easier. (Case in point -- often people with personality disorders/PTSD view the world more in terms of luck and less in terms of personal agency. In reality, many of these people may have experienced "unlucky" events over which they had little control. Is their perception less right? Perhaps not. But is it helpful to them? Well, perhaps not, too.)