Problem is, LH, that the human mind is infinitely plastic and capable of generating experience, as well as recording experience and recording experiences it itself has generated. While your arguments are perfectly sensible, the tendency of the western intellectual community under 'iffy propositions' like these is to resort to some sort of empiricism. And there is really precious little empirical evidence to make your explanation a preferable one! That said, of course, it may -- in fact probably IS -- the case that so-called empiricism is just a convenience and fundamentally not the convincing final court that it is used for. But it is a fairly robust convention and shouldn't be thrown out lightly.

A