The nature of reality?

 Reptiles and lower vertebrates see( perceive) the environment differently. For them it is all about tactile vibrations, smell and maybe some shoddy colors (Apparently a variety of sensors for different species).Nevertheless their world view is totally different from ours but does it mean we perceive the environment as it is in reality? How do we know that whatever we are sensing is correct and is without distortions...I mean for a completely healthy person. If not ...then a fundamental question arises...what is the nature of reality? What is the nature of our consciousness?..is it merely materialistic or is it metaphysical?

Let us try to understand the very nature of reality that we perceive everyday and throughout our lived experiences. From the evolutionary perspective, only aim of any organism is survival, and for that matter they have developed different faculties to understand their surroundings. This implies that we only perceive whatever is needed for our survival. Our faculties cannot sense something which is extrasensory i.e. something that our faculties are not developed to sense. There is no way to verify if the objects that we perceive actually exist . Even if we touch an object, it only indicates that nerve endings in so and so region of our body have fired/stimulated in response to some stimulus. But can we ever know that if there was actually an external stimulus?....No. So from above discussion we can concluded that our faculties alone cannot establish the nature of reality.

It is part of the commonsense view of the wold that each of us exists as a separate individual who is ' conscious '. In a certain sense , all that 'I' see- the earth , the trees, the stars, other people - is in my mind. On the other hand my 'mind' is, in the commonsense view, situated somewhere inside my body, which moves about in this world of earth and trees and stars and other people. In short, my mind is in the world ,and the world is in my mind. How are we to solve this puzzle?

It is not purely verbal. To attempt a solution, we must try to answer such questions as: What is my mind , and exactly where is it? What does the word 'I' mean? Is it my body, my intellect, my soul or what? Where, for example, do 'I' go when 'I' am asleep?