Our consciousness might be considered as analogous to a magic trick. When experienced from a place of intimate involvement, the illusion is overwhelming. But observed from a position of dispassionate detachment, the action of elements of legerdemain are apparent.

I do not experience reality when I dream.

I deduce this, since awake I have my dream experience memory for comparison.

But while I dream, no matter how preposterous that experience, I am prepared to accept it as reality. Not only that, but this unreal reality is synthetically generated within a sealed enclosure.

Any device capable of processing information into a credible experience of reality without external input, would likely be able to create a believable reality using external input.

If, while awake, external input converted directly into experience, the direct-line system involved could not introduce distortion.

But with an active indirect processing system remaining in circuit, between input and experience, I would be at the mercy of its vagaries. In a worst case scenario such a circuit layout would be able to combine elements derived from one source, with elements obtained from the other. Even to the extent of producing a composite final output, dramatically at variance with the initial and original input.

Unaware of this, I would be compelled to respond. Since I know that what I am experiencing is reality.

So perhaps I do not experience reality.

Maybe I experience my own personal rendition (interpretation) of reality, and unwittingly accept that as reality. Since I never experience actual reality to provide me with a means of comparison. But this would imply that the realities experienced by others, might also not be actual reality.

I would suggest, that more than ample evidence exists of this. Yet still we persist, in unwittingly accepting unique personal renditions of reality as actual reality.