Looking and seeing seem simple -- but they are not. "It only seems simple because you're unaware of what is happening." From this, Minsky appears to me to take a very strong stance against introspection as a way of discovering things about the mind: "Thinking affects our thoughts." Later, "consciousness is connected with our most immediate memories. This means that there are limits on what consciousness can tell us about itself -- because it can't do perfect self-experiments."
(NB1: So, this is a continuation of Minsky trying to change self-view -- self-view isn't powerful enough for self-understanding, so we need an alternative (scientific) approach.)
(NB2: Hmmm...when Minsky started selling us the view of multiple selfs in his essays in Chapter 4, didn't introspection play an important role in his development of the multiple-agent view?)
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