More than meets the I

It’s so easy to agree with TSK statements, since they’ve so often proved true in the past, and then not really test them out in life.  On the first page of chapter 16 I had an uncharacteristic reaction.  Two words struck me as too extreme: constructs being “imposed” on reality, and knowing through constructs being like looking at a “mirror”.  I protested: surely we can pour lemonade into a glass or a mug, but it’s still lemonade.  Aren’t constructs like a container for what we experience? And when I perceive, surely I am peering into a realm that may be distorted but not completely hidden.  Then I remembered what earlier chapters say about how we project the familiar forward and so keep repeating and wanting the same limited things.  Thinking of a mirror as being like the screen on which we project what our models allow us to “know”, felt more familiar.  What might be on the other side of the screen perhaps really is invisible (like the alley behind the theater when we are engrossed in a movie).  And if all we see is the container, do we really taste the lemonade?  –Michael