Perception and its Connection to the Mind

Something that I have found rather interesting about Arendt's concept of the life of the mind is that it is that, while the activities take place outside of the world of perception, it is dependent on those perceptions in order to exist. If there was nothing to perceive, then there would be nothing to think about, or, at least, not in the way that we would understand considering our perception based thinking. Which raises the interesting question of how the thinking of individuals who's perceptions of the world differ from ours. What does the thought process of a blind person look like? That of a person with a brain injury that alters how they see the world? That of a mentally ill person, who suffers from hallucinations? Of a person who has synesthesia, who perceive different sense in the context of others, like seeing sounds or smelling sights? What's more, it raises the question of what does it mean of our thoughts if the very thing they are concerned with, the reality we perceive, isn't what is truly there. All we know is that our surroundings look like what we perceive. It is entirely possible that what we see is fundamentally wrong, and yet, because it is what we as a species can perceive, it is what we take to be real. It is entirely possible that, as the Matrix says, "There is no spoon."  But that's a bit over my head to really begin to comment about. I just find it interesting to contemplate how our perceptions of reality affects how we think, and how the perceptions of others does the same to them.