They don't?
No, can't find it since it's the one I don't have digitally, but in WLW, Cleric asks Mimara something like "Is it true that man experiences touching themselves and the touch of another differently?" Whether or not that's the exact wording, the implication was very much from a 'different species' perspective, rather than 'Erratic vs. non-Erratic'.
Their art depicts a flow or summation of behaviors - they are never tricked into thinking their present self is the self.
These are radically different perspectives, and it makes their thinking genuinely alien to our own.
Is this radically different experience of reality due to them being (most likely) an entirely different species from Homo sapiens, or is it due to the slow derangement that accumulates as a result of their inability to cope with the sheer volume of their own memories? I find it hard to believe most Nonmen could function if their perspectives are anything approaching as erratic as the one in the first Atrocity Tale. But then he was an Erratic. And yet in a way that kind of art seems to represent a tendency not to see things in discrete events separated in time, which is certainly how that particular Cunuroi perceived the world.
And clearly their perceptions are different in some ways...they can't see paintings, evidently, so they have to do friezes and statues.
I just think their alzheimer's like symptoms are going to make judging what is native to their species and what is pathology difficult, if they end up being present in all Nonmen to one degree or another.
And I wonder what it implies of the Quya is Nonman thinking is inherently so alien to Homo sapiens? Is there really all that much overlap between the Quya and the Gnosis? The Nonman mind may be able to make logical leaps in their sorceries that a human would be unable to, and vice versa.
But yeah, if we get characters at Ishterebinth hopefully some of these questions are at least partially answered.
In this universe (that is, from Bakker's view), the 'self', and what it means to be a 'self', takes on a strong significance, so I think there's a deliberate creation in the Nonman self - and I think the ultimate crux of the Nonman self is that they don't view themselves as an
instant, as a purely present existence. They recognize, perhaps only briefly, that what comes before and after is still integral to what defines their selves, and from there it might easily flow into a lack of distinction between other selves.
Maybe Bakker read up on
mirror neurons and integrated those into the Nonman mind.
Also, I believe Madness said that we will explore a great deal of Nonman culture and mindsets when the story reaches Ishterebinth.