Does a perception exist without a focused mind?

• Regarding perception while sleeping, one can dream, and my own experience suggests that sometimes external stimuli can combine with the dream (integrate into it) as it is occurring, not as perceptions of one's surroundings, but as perceptions that happen to fit in, perhaps very bizarrely, with whatever one is dreaming about.

• Regarding perception of clothes while driving, the directing of attention to some other perceptually demanding task seems to be able to impede other perceptual processes that would otherwise occur (as far as I can discern from my own observations and experience). One's sense of touch still operates, producing sensations from the contact with one's clothes, but a highly concentrated perceptual attention directed elsewhere probably occupies one's perceptual capacity sufficiently to reduce or prevent the retention and integration of sensations proceeding from clothing contact, until one's perceptual attention is more relaxed and less highly directed toward a demanding cognitive task. (I'm not aware of any specific statement about this in the literature of Objectivism, however; it's my own application of principles and knowledge.)

• Regarding alleged sensations by plants, I disagree that the responsiveness of plants to some very simple environmental stimuli constitutes sensation or the existence of sense organs in plants. That is not how the term "sensation" and the expression "sensory organ" are normally applied (as far as I know). Furthermore (to my knowledge), plants have no nervous system, unlike animals. There are definite mechanisms that affect the actions of plants, but I don't see that they qualify as sensory processes; those mechanisms are simply too different from sense organs and sensations in animals.

• Regarding the expression, "focused mind," that expression tends to imply a conceptual level of awareness. One does not need to be in focus conceptually in order to have perceptions. Perception is automatic; conceptual focus is volitional, and going out of focus only blocks concepts (and only conscious conceptual functioning, not continued subconscious functioning); unfocusing doesn't stop one's mind from continuing to experience perceptions.

For further explanation of the Objectivist view of sensations and perception, refer to the topics of "Sensations" and "Perception" in The Ayn Rand Lexicon.

Perception is automatic, within the limitations of your sense organs, but you don't have to pay attention to what you are perceiving.

For example, if someone is quiet, and behind me, I will not perceive them unless I turn around. That's because my eyes are directionally limited, and my ears are limited in their ability to hear, and my nose can't sense people at a distance, and my sense of touch is even less sensitive than my ears (it requires contact with something solid, rather than just air vibrations).

As well, if I'm in a crowd, surrounded by hundreds of people, I may perceive them all, but I won't remember any of them unless I take notice of him or her.

Perception creates what is available for the mind to focus on, if it chooses.

I don't think that perception operates while you are sleeping. I think that's what being asleep means: you have no perceptions -- or perhaps it means that even though you have perceptions, you are unable to pay attention to any of them. Regardless, perception is of no use to you while you are asleep.

Is there a perception of your clothes while you are focused on something else? Yes. This is evidenced by the fact that if you choose, you can pay attention to your clothes. Consciousness has an ability to remove, from attention, that which is relatively constant. That's why it's hard to focus on a blank wall, and why one tends to forget about one's clothing while one wears them.