No, I don't think we do. I find myself to be, at best, an indirect realist. That is to say, I think what is the case that our conscious experience of reality is a mental reconstruction of sense data by our brains.
However, I'm not convinced this is really an answerable question. Answering affirmatively (that we directly see reality as it is) draws in some, I think, dubious assumptions. Even within our mentally reconstructed perception of reality, we have massive evidence as to the fact that our brains streamline what it receives via sense data and doesn't deliver the complete picture, so to say, but rather perceptions is more biologically manageable chunks. This is where things like motion blindness and such would come in I guess.
However, I'm not convinced this is really an answerable question. Answering affirmatively (that we directly see reality as it is) draws in some, I think, dubious assumptions. Even within our mentally reconstructed perception of reality, we have massive evidence as to the fact that our brains streamline what it receives via sense data and doesn't deliver the complete picture, so to say, but rather perceptions is more biologically manageable chunks. This is where things like motion blindness and such would come in I guess.
"The reason things will never get better is because people keep electing these rich cocksuckers who don't give a shit about you."
-George Carlin
-George Carlin
