Reality is what you perceive it to be
Now, there may be plenty of philosophically problematic answers to this question floating around, but this answer one of the most problematic.
I want to give three examples here to show how this can't work. Each should be quite believable, although the last is a pretty rebuttal of your claim.
1) If you've ever taken any psychoactive drugs, then you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, just humor me.
During a "trip" it's fairly common for spacial reasoning to become confused (like the walls seeming to "breathe"
and many people see "tracers" behind moving objects. If you don't know what tracers are, there should be a feature where you can turn on the tracing feature of your mouse cursor. Then you can literally see what someone who is tripping would see when they move their hand.
Clearly, in this case, what is perceived is not reality.
2) Consider a white room with nothing in it but a blue box. I see the blue box, am under no reality-distorting drugs, and I form the belief that I'm in a room with a blue box. But really, the box is white - there's simply a blue light that's shining brightly on it to give it the appearance of being blue. Once the light is turned off, I can see my mistake.
Still, this is another example where perception does not match up with reality.
3) Finally, a pretty famous example of how the things we perceive are not identical to the things in the real world. Let's say I have a straight stick. We all see it, it looks straight, it's a straight stick.
Now, suppose I half-submerge the stick in water. It will appear to be bent. In other words, we will be perceiving a bent stick.
So, our perception = a bent stick
the reality = a straight stick
a bent stick =/= a straight stick
therefore, reality is not what we perceive.
House is stumping here for a direct realist notion of reality. And the bent stick argument is a famous counterexample to direct realism.
So, now what?
