Paradigm and Perception

So, if we build reality out of our already existing store of memories, emotions and association, how do we ever perceive anything new?
The key is new knowledge. By expanding our paradigm, our model of what is real and what is possible, we create knowledge that was not a reality before because of experience. If you want someone to know what it is like to eat a peach, you can give them information like it's juicy and sweet and smooth, but they'll never really know until they bit into one. When was the last time you blew your own mind? The last time you did something so outrageously "not you" that you stood with your mouth open saying, "I cant believe I did that." It's back to the old question: If you perceive only what you know, how do you ever perceive anything new? If you create you, how do you ever create any new you? What is the real world?

Hopefully, whatever box one is thinking inside of has windows, so that new input can enter. Then it's a matter of choosing (consciously or otherwise) what one does with that new input: toss it back out the window, or use it to modify / improve / expand the box you're in, with a central aim of getting a clearer picture of the box itself.

Ideally, at some point, it would be nice to step outside the box altogether, but I don't know if that's possible. Or if it is, that's what we call 'enlightenment': knowing Reality as Such.

I think it is intuition/creativity/imagination(or simply perception) that allow us to expand our paradigm. That is what happens in science(when it evolves). To prove something new you cannot do that only considering what you already know. A new theory is not just a consequence of what you already know. You always have to work with new basic principles, and principles cannot be deduced from anywhere. You need intuition and imagination to conceive them and society sometimes have problems when inference cannot be used to go further.

Our society has a little problem accepting new principles. So when you need to abandon one old principle because it is the only way to explain some things in nature, it can be very hard for society to adapt to the new ideas.

For me an old paradigm that needs to be abandoned is empiricism. Limitations of this idea can be perceived in many places and they are very obvious sometimes. You don´t need to abandon reason and logic to see its limitation.

We form cognitive schemata of things and actions.

As new things are encountered, exemplars, we add them to schemata that they are the most congruent with and the concept of the schema, which is really just the "average" of the exemplars, changes to include that example.

Its why we know so many different shapes and arrangements as "cakes". and how if we see a cake in a design that we have never seen before, we can tell that it is a cake very quickly.

Basically, nothing is entirely "new" unless you are talking about initial neuro development. These not new things can be arranged into new forms, but at the bottom of it all are common properties to all things of that category.