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I don't see how your perceptions can be anything other than a direct experience of reality interacting with itself unless you imagine that your mind is separated from reality somehow

[pphysch]

We do have a direct experience with reality, but we are only capable of processing an approximate & infinitely simplified model of it.

When you take a picture of an apple, you have a picture of an apple, not the apple itself. Both are real and related, but not the same thing.