2021/10/2 Around the corner there is a bush. Can you see it? Can you picture the bush that you can not see because it is around the corner? I bet you can and I bet you can't not. Even though you should not. In this box is a ruby ring in a black velvet bag. Can you see the bag and the glint of the ring. Feel the soft fabric? Why can you even see though the box as you think of it? Why does your mind like to have everything laid out at once? The literal scene is not what you experience. Even when you are at your home. When you open a drawer you've already looked inside it with your mind. You don't live in a world of sight. You live in a world of imagination. Everything is illustrated by your mind. Both things with labels and things with mere forms. They paint the picture of your world. Many sense memories are used as symbols for things in your world without having a name. Sometimes things with names or labels also have unnamed attributes that are more primary in mind. The particular feel of the softness of a particular shirt may be what you associate the sight of that shirt with but you may not have given it a name. If your attention is called to it you would easily give it a name such as 'Soft flowing brown shirt' but the name isn't necessary to have the symbol in your mind. You don't need a label to think about things. The way you do any procedural task such as brush your teeth or button a cuff won't necessarily have labels but there are associated memories that you rely on to guide you through it. Some people talk about how we can't see past our labels, that all we ever see are our labels but we can see past them and not everything is a label. It is true that once an association is created it can be hard to get rid of it whether that's a label or a feeling or physical reaction. And it is true that those associations are triggered whenever you encounter the object, sensation, or situation that it was formed from, unless something prevents the triggering such as a psychedelic drug or context or priming. But you can, and often do, have more than one association for any trigger. It's how the neural network is built. You hardly ever just see one thing, one label, there's a whole flood of information. Most of that is filtered away so you can focus on whatever you might be doing, so the flood doesn't breach the threshold of conscious thought. Many of our salient associations are related to our intention or use for a thing. The glass of water will be drunk to satisfy thirst. The primary thoughts are not “I am going to pour water from the glass into my mouth then swallow it down my throat” but the sensation of thirst and the symbolic sensation of the effect from drinking the water and the feelings associated with it that you remember will subdue the thirst. Labels may be pushed aside. The linguistic parts of the brain take a lot of energy.