How do we know what is real and what isn't? Where do facts come from?

These are really philosophical questions that have philosophical answers and like most good philosophical problems the answers are neither complete nor without controversy.

The simple answer is there are a number of different methods by which we come to know what is true in the world.

Experience and cognitive interpretation would be the method used most of the time by most of us and seems sufficient for most things. I am not sure that this method would be included in philosophy text books as a formal way of knowing but it is in fact the common sense that we rely on to guide us through so much of our lives that it seems crazy to leave it out. However, there is only so much that we can learn from our own personal experiences and very often experience (perception of the world) can be misleading so that interpretation can bring us to an incorrect conclusion. A famous example of this is the common sense (experiential based interpretation) that the sun, rising in the east and setting in the west, goes around the earth. Of course, from our grade school science classes we know, that the earth revolves about its rotational axis on a daily basis making it seem as if the sun is revolving around the earth when it is in fact the earth that is revolving.

Science is a distinct and specific method of knowing that helped us determine, by carefully collecting and analyzing physical data, the reality of the relationship between the earth and suns corresponding movements.

Intuitive Inquiry

Philosophy

Theology