The Sensory-Perceptual Level as Automatic

The sensory level of awareness consists of a set of fleeting impressions that are lost the moment they are no longer impinging upon the sensory organs of the creature in question; on the perceptual level, these impressions are retained and integrated into specific percepts. Both of these levels are automatic—it is not possible for a creature to choose to not sense a given entity, as this would violate causality. It is also not possible to choose to not perform the retaining and integration of qualia into percepts—you cannot choose to not see a table and instead see only the fleeting, momentary sensations that make up the table. This is because the perceptual stage is given–metaphysically given–in any process of cognition you do and must start with the fact of entities which you are performing your cognition upon, but knowledge of those entities exists on the perceptual level. If perception was volitional, then one could simply choose how to integrate sensory data however they wanted and they could never begin any process of cognition. I could decide that I want tables to be chairs, and chairs to be Hegel—I would not be able to deduce any facts about reality.