Stephen Downs- An Introduction to Connective Knowledge

Here's what I'm getting from Downs:  We can never experience direct reality.  We can only experience our interpretation or reality, every single time.  Nothing is actually a fact, there are just convergences of experiences that we interpret into meaning.  So for example, "An apple is red" is not a fact, it's a convergence of a distribution of knowledge of what our experience of an apple, our experience of color, our interpretation of "red" in this exact light, our interpretation of the verb "is", etc etc.   All of that of course is our interpretation based on our perception.  We will make 'inferences' where we pick out perceptions that are the most useful for us to interpret and disregard the rest.  But not only do we interpret things for our use, we are actually MAKING meaning by these interpretations.  So if there were no people to 'perceive' the concept of 'hard' and recognize that diamonds have it, then diamonds would not be hard because there would be no 'hard'.  

OK, I get it, but is this really new?  Isn't he saying 'if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really fall?'  If he had to answer that question, I think he would say no, it did not really fall.   And that's where he's lost me, because yes, the tree DID fall.  Just because we can never experience direct reality, why does that mean direct reality doesn't exist?  

This isn't a new topic to philosophers-  it automatically brings to mind Plato's chair.  I think Plato would argue that it's true, we can only interpret "chair" through our senses but none of the things we sense are the original 'essence' of chair.  We can never perceive the 'essence' of chair but it definitely exists.  And what about Descartes' evil demon?  None of us can prove that we're not in the Matrix.  There might actually be an evil demon controlling all of our perceptions and EVERYTHING we perceive may be false.  Except that I can perceive myself thinking, which means that one thing is true and that I really do exist.

I think I'm following what he's saying but why is it so important that there's no reality outside of interpretation?  I just don't buy it.