There is a pretty uncontroversial sense in which, when we apprehend the world out there, we’re not really apprehending the world out there but rather are “constructing” it. After all, we don’t have much direct contact with the world; the things we see and smell and hear are some distance from our bodies, so all the brain can do is make inferences about them based on indirect evidence: molecules that waft across the street from a bakery, sound waves emanating from a jet plane, particles of light that bounce off trees.
