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If we look at the basics of a perception we have sensory inputs, an information processor and the screen for the output. 

Unlike a computer that has a monitor or tv by which to output the final rendered product of information processing, life has done something far more extraordinary. 

We don’t have a computer screen inside of our head. Instead, the mind simulates the screen, as all the regions of the brain required to process sensory information are distributed within a 3D cellular matrix.


—Ian Wilson
Immersion Into the Human Experience

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What we see depends on the light entering the eye. Furthermore we do not even perceive what enters the eye. The things transmitted are waves or—as Newton thought—minute particles, and things seen are colours. Locke met this difficulty by a theory of primary and secondary qualities. 

Namely, there are the primary qualities, and there are other things which we perceive, such as colours, which are not attributes of matter.

Why should we perceive secondary qualities? It seems an extremely unfortunate arrangement that we should perceive a lot of things that are not there. Yet this is what a theory of secondary qualities in fact comes to. 

There is now reigning in philosophy and in science an apathetic acquiescence in the conclusion that no coherent account can be given of nature as it is disclosed to us in sense-awareness without dragging in its relations to mind. The modern account of what the mind knows of nature is not, as it should be, merely an account of what the mind knows of nature; but it is also confused with an account of what nature does to the mind.

The ground taken is this: sense-awareness is an awareness of something. What then is the general character of that something of which we are aware? We do not ask about the percipient or about the process, but about the perceived.

Evolution in the complexity of life means an increase in the types of objects directly sensed. Delicacy of sense-apprehension means perceptions of objects as distinct entities. The phrasing of music is a mere abstract subtlety to the unmusical; it is a direct sense-apprehension to the initiated. 

For example, if we could imagine some lowly type of organic being thinking and aware of our thoughts, it would wonder at the abstract subtleties in which we indulge as we think of stones and bricks and drops of water and plants. It only knows of vague undifferentiated feelings in nature. It would consider us as given over to the play of excessively abstract intellects. 

But then if it could think, it would anticipate; and if it anticipated, it would soon perceive for itself.


—Alfred North Whitehead
The Concept of Nature, excerpts

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