"I believe that there is an objective reality. And I believe there are truths that can be learned about that objective reality."
- Matt Dillahunty
I think that no person should ever feel held hostage by their own mental abilities. Because, for those of us who have the ability to read, we also have the mental abilities necessary to learn and understand effective methods for making determinations about reality. For example:
Inference: the process of using observation and background knowledge to figure out what is most probably true.
1.) Induction: The process of taking what you know about one thing and applying it broadly to other similar things.
2.) Deduction: The process of taking what you know about many similar things and applying it to a single thing.
Consistency: Making sure that one conclusion doesn't contradict any other conclusions.
Validity: Having some objective way that a conclusion can be reached while also having standards of evidence high enough that don't let two or more contradictory conclusions arrive simultaneously.
Perception isn't the end of understanding our world. It's the very beginning. We take what we learn from our perceptions and then try to build models of reality from it. And the better cognitive tools we have at our disposal the better models of reality we'll be able to build.
We do this everyday. For example, this is how we can tell the difference between a memory of an event vs the memory of a dream. Because one will be consistent with what we know about reality and be anchored by past events - while the other may be inconsistent with reality and will not be substantiated by any surrounding events.
That is to say, while we "perceived" both reality and the dream - we can still tell them apart. Because perception doesn't determine what we think of reality. Our sense of reasoning does.
In the end, the validity of our reasoning is in its explanatory and predictive powers. If we're constantly baffled by the world around us and are consistently surprised by the events in our lives - then we may have a poor set of reasoning skills*. Whereas if we have an understanding of the world around us and are able to accurately forecast near future events - then we're probably practicing good epistemology.
I know that these tools have been invaluable in making me "smarter". I hope they can be of benefit to some of you too :)
*When I say "skill" I mean a learned ability honed with practice and effort. For example:
Metacognition: To think about thinking. To consider one's own thought process.
Mental Discipline: Training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties.