Your own thoughts please:

1. Is it possible to have real knowledge?

2. Does reason provide us with knowledge of the world independently of experience?

3. Does our knowledge represent reality as it really is?

Here is a short essay I wrote for my Philosophy class..:

http://www.defendingthetruth.com/art...w-we-know.html (What can we know and how we know)

Thank you for your engaging essay, Ridin.

From what I pieced together, you would probably say "yes" to the first question, "no" to the second (as you said that although reason is important it can't derive knowledge alone), but I'm not sure what you think about the third question.

I think you acknowledged the skeptic's point on illusions, or what's also known as universal belief falsifiers (or, Descartes' "malicious demon" from his Meditations), but to you does this skepticism have any merit?

In your example, we can see from the mountain top the slight curvature of the Earth (empiricism), and reason that the Earth must be globular (rationalism); but perhaps this is an illusion? Maybe in reality as it really is, Earth is rectangular? How would we ever know, could we ever know, or is everything we believe merely an inference to the best explanation?

And if your answer to the third question is 'no', then could what we 'know' ever be considered 'real knowledge'?