This more or less agrees with much of the above, but I point you in the direction of Alfred Korzybski, famous Polish-American philosopher, and originator of "General Semantics".
Basically, he said that we
do not and
cannot have
direct access to the objects of Reality (whetever they may be). Our minds have direct access only to the electrical/chemical signals from our senses. Our minds use that information to construct a simulacrum of the external Reality. We conduct our very lives inside the sim-Reality we construct. And as we on-goingly live and learn, we on-goingly construct our sim_Reality.
The success of our lives depends in an obvious way upon the high degree of correlation between real-Reality and sim-Reality.
Given the fact that the first proto-sim-Realities were being constructed prior to the Cambrian Explosion, we can make an Evolutionary argument that the degree of correlation is indeed very high, but only within the superposition of all sensory domains. In other words, our sim-Reality is near perfect to the extent of that which we can see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and kiness*. So, our sim-Reality works almost perfectly for baseballs traveling at 50 mph, but doesn't work at all for protons traveling at 50% of the speed of light.
*kiness, v. (kin-ess') = made-up word intended to reflect our ability to sense physical kinesthetic properties such as force, mass, weight, accelleration, speed, tension, body position, limb placement, etc.
Korzybski called our sim-Reality "the Map", and the real-Reality "the Territory". He coined the famous phrase "The Map is not the Territory" which became one of the core philosophical principals buttressing General Semantics. To make a long story short, the Map is constructed of temporal sequences of sensory memories/images, and of
semantic structures.
That the Territory "exists" cannot be refuted. Walk off a cliff or drive your car into a tree. The consequences are quite real, both in the Map and the Territory. You might even speak of the Territory as "existence" itself. Existence exists. Self-evident axiom.
That the Map "exists" cannot be refuted. The Map is, in a very real sense, the Mind. I have one. Do you?
What can we KNOW of the Territory (real-Reality)? Damn near anything. Everything if you give us time enough. It's just a matter of devising the right experiments, that will generate the right data, that can be absorbed by our senses, which will enhance the correlation of our Maps. So, we can UNDERSTAND parts of the Territory that we can never experience or even sense. But that knowledge and understanding will be constructed of semantic structures.
We cannot access Reality directly.
You were born into your Map. You will live your entire life in your Map. The only reality you will ever know is your Map. You will die when your Map fragments and fades.
So it behooves you to build the very best and the most accurate and complete Map that you possibly can.
Stop wasting your time jacking off with numerology, astrology, alien abductions, past-life regressions, Bigfoot, and right-wing conspiracy theories.
