p.10 Mind is empty; it is a no-thing. It exists only in its ideas, and these again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, again, no-things... it [JLJ - the item under discussion, which happens to be a claw of a crab] is what the mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other.

p.12 There is a story which I have used before and shall use again: A man wanted to know about mind, not in nature, but in his private large computer. He asked it (no doubt in his best Fortran), "Do you compute that you will ever think like a human being?" The machine then set to work to analyze its own computational habits. Finally, the machine printed its answer on a piece of paper, as such machines do. The man ran to get the answer and found, neatly typed, the words: THAT REMINDS ME OF A STORY

p.12-13 Now I want to show that whatever the word "story" means …, the fact of thinking in terms of stories does not isolate human beings as something separate from the starfish and the sea anemones, the coconut palms and the primroses. Rather, if the world be connected, if I am at all fundamentally right in what I am saying, then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemones. Context and relevance must be characteristic not only of all so-called behavior (those stories which are projected out into "action"), but also of all those internal stories

p.21 [Chapter 2] Every Schoolboy Knows

p.25 1. Science Never Proves Anything

Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs... we shall never be able to claim final knowledge of anything whatsoever.

p.27 perception operates only upon difference. All receipt of information is necessarily the receipt of news of difference... Knowledge at any given moment will be a function of the thresholds of our available means of perception.

p.27 Science probes; it does not prove.

p.27 2. The Map is Not the Territory, and the Name is Not the Thing Mapped

p.28 3. There is No Objective Experience

p.29 4. The Processes of Image Formation Are Unconscious

The processes of perception are inaccessible; only the products are conscious and, of course, it is the products that are necessary. The two general facts – first, that I am unconscious of the process of making the images which I consciously see and, second, that in these unconscious processes, I use a whole range of presuppositions which become built into the finished image – are, for me, the beginning of empirical epistemology.

p.29 we all know that the images which we "see"are indeed manufactured by the brain or mind.

p.35 5. The Division of the Perceived Universe Into Parts and Wholes Is Convenient and May Be Necessary, But No Necessity Determines How It Shall Be Done

p.37 6. Divergent Sequences Are Unpredictable

p.38 Under tension, a chain will break at its weakest link. That much is predictable. What is difficult is to identify the weakest link before it breaks. The generic we can know, but the specific eludes us... because we cannot know which link is weakest, we cannot know precisely how much tension will be needed to break the chain.

p.40 7. Convergent Sequences Are Predictable

p.42 8. "Nothing Will Come of Nothing"

p.45 9. Number is Different From Counting

p.45 Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement.

p.49 10. Quantity Does Not Determine Pattern

p.50 11. There Are No Monotone "Values" in Biology

p.50 12. Sometimes Small Is Beautiful

p.54 13. Logic Is a Poor Model of Cause and Effect

p.54-55 When the sequences of cause and effect become circular (or more complex than circular), then the description or mapping of those sequences onto timeless logic becomes self-contradictory... The if...then of causality contains time, but the if...then of logic is timeless. It follows that logic is an incomplete model of causality.

p.56 14. Causality Does Not Work Backward

p.56 15. Language Commonly Stresses Only One Side of Any Interacton

p.57 16. "Stability" and "Change" Describe Parts of Our Descriptions

p.64 it takes at least two somethings to create a difference.

p.85-86 This list is the cornerstone of the whole book... The criteria of mind that seem to me to work together to supply this solution are here listed to give the reader a preliminary survey of what is proposed.

1. A mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components.
2. The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference, and difference is a nonsubstantial phenomenon not located in space or time; difference is related to negentripy and entropy rather than to energy.
3. Mental process requires collateral energy.
4. Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination.
5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e., coded versions) of events which preceded them. The rules of such transformation must be comparatively stable (i.e., more stable than the content) but are themselves subject to transformation.
6. The description and classification of these processes of transformation disclose a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena.

p.89 in the world of ideas, it takes a relationship, either between two parts or between a part at time 1 and the same part at time 2, to activate some third component which we may call the receiver. What the receiver... responds to is a difference or a change.

p.92 Difference, being of the nature of relationship, is not located in time or space... Information consists of differences that make a difference.

p.96 the organization of living things depends upon circular and more complex chains of determination.

p.128 The game [of play, between members of two different species] and the creation of the game must be seen as a single phenomenon, and indeed, it is subjectively plausible to say that the sequence is really playable only so long as it retains some elements of the creative and unexpected... A will try various actions on B and find that B will only accept certain contexts... A "proposes"; B "disposes."

[JLJ - see Nachmanovitch, 1990, The creative person can be seen as embodying or acting as two characters, a muse and an editor... the muse proposes, the editor disposes. The editor criticizes, shapes, and organizes the raw material that the free play of the muse has generated]

p.128 we define play as the establishment and exploration of relationship

p.130 In ordinary parlance, "play" is not the name of an act or action; it is the name of a frame for action.

p.130-131 exploration is self-validating, whether the outcome is pleasant or unpleasant for the explorer... exploration is not only self-validating; it also seems in human beings to be addictive.

p.207 If you want to understand mental process, look at biological evolution and conversely if you want to understand biological evolution, go look at mental process.

[JLJ - Seemingly a great answer, but in retrospect it says nothing.]