• To perceive is to remember, to recognise — know again. We cannot perceive what we don’t know or remember. Everything we perceive we will seek to categorise according to our memory. We have to learn to see. When we recognise an object in a picture we do so because we remember the object depicted, but we also recognise the substrate of the picture — the material it is made from —and it’s cultural context (old, modern, high art) as well as its meaning (fear, emotion, humour, sarcasm, violence). That is, we perceive and remember several things at once, but all are imagined.• The Unity of Consciousness. If consciousness were unified we would not be aware of differences. Consciousness is the sum of distinctions.
• Perception is an act of imagination.
• There is no word or phrase that describes the state of reality as it really is, rather than as it appears. The world is both full of objects, things, systems, relationships, and at the same time it is completely devoid of these. It is not neutral, since neutrality implies neither one state nor the other, and since both states pertain it is not neutral.
• Because the mind is reality — is nature — not something separate, it has the same generative possibilities for creating novelty and the same structural limitations.
• When people argue about the existence or not of an external world, one has to ask ‘External to what?’ The head? The brain? Part of the brain (remember mind can continue even if parts of the brain are removed)? A group of cells? A specific cell…?
• A notion of externality would require some knowledge of the precise location of the perceiving subject. Since we don't know precisely where the conscious self is located (many assume the brain, but even here it is not known exactly where) we cannot know where the boundary between the 'internal' and 'external' lies. Nor do we even know if there is a boundary.
