I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.
I just love the idea that people disappear into the story for a while. You grab a book, and you want to get back to it, and your life becomes a bit of an interruption. I would love readers to feel like that.
Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.
The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.
The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.