The magical black box

In a discussion in comments to “The Primacy of Thought” at Ron Murphy’s blog, I suggested that I might do a full post here on the title topic.  A link in Ron’s blog took me to “The importance of evidence” which is a post by Mike D.  There, Mike D discusses what he sees as the foundations of knowledge, where he says:

Empiricism requires us to make to two foundational assumptions:

1. I exist
2. My senses generally provide me with reliable information

For myself, I am not making those assumptions, and I want to discuss why and to indicate where I do begin.