The reasons for the existence of this deep liking are mysterious, not obvious. To plumb them we shall have to examine the nature of things - even, ultimately, the nature of matter itself - very carefully. Nevertheless the reasons are empirical. We may determine, empirically, to what extent a thing has the ability to rouse this deep liking in us.

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• Somehow, the experience of real liking has to do with self. As we find out which things awaken real liking in ourselves, we find ourselves more in touch than before with our own selves.claim0.832
  Linking real liking to self-discovery.
• Our everyday liking (subjective preference) often diverges from deep liking, but deep liking converges to agreement and corresponds to living structure.claim0.830
  Distinction between superficial and deep preference.
• There is an empirical way in which we can help ourselves to find out what we really like from the heart. Nevertheless, it is not easy to find what we really like, and it is by no means automatic to be in touch with it. It takes effort, hard work, and personal enlightenment to understand it and to feel it.claim0.810
  Fifth point introducing the empirical test and the personal growth required.
• As observers mature, their liking converges because they discover the deeper self that is shared.claim0.802
  Developmental claim about aesthetic maturity.
• Real liking comes from childish truthfulness, in which one respects one's own feeling and does not pay homage to a theory or idea.claim0.798
  Definition of genuine liking as originating in a pre-conceptual, child-like authenticity.
• "[W]e must confess that perception, and what depends upon it, is inexplicable in terms of mechanical reasons... when inspecting its interior, we will find only parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception."quote0.796
  Canonical illustration of the Hard Problem intuition that any functional/mechanical explanation faces an explanatory gap for perception
• What reason might there be that the centers which appear in natural things, created by apparently mechanical processes of nature unfolding, would also resemble your self, and my self?question0.785
  The deepest question driving Proposition 3: natural unfolding produces I-like centers, but why should a mathematical process care about self?
• "[W]e must confess that perception, and what depends upon it, is inexplicable in terms of mechanical reasons... we will find only parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception."quote0.778
  Load-bearing quote from Monadology §17 providing earliest clear statement of the Hard Problem