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All is interpretation

What appears to you is what is. There is nothing outside of you which tells you, or me, that IT, what ever "it" is, IS.

The only way I can know is through me and my senses. My stream of experiences are mine, no one else's. These experiences do not prove the existence of the exterior world or anything in it. I construct that sense-world by attributing my sensations to an unknown universe. The world then is my projected picture of it, symbolic and approximate. We justify, on the whole, the external world by accepting our private evidence that something exists beyond ourselves.

So, I contend, we go about our business thinking that I see, feel, hear--sense--what you think you see, etc., or can. Thus the bases for science and other things. I becomes we. And we proceed beyond me and under the illusion that my concrete reality is the same as yours, a "consensual realty." We carry on our oh-so-practical lives on what are defenseless and uncertain foundations.

Thus all is interpretation, the business of naming, describing the workings, and understanding. Scientists interpret. Sociologists and others do also. We do. The reality that is, or is claimed, shimmers.

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