Yeah, I’m not equating irrationality with the material nor rationality with the immaterial. I am saying that every physical speck of the universe is a medium for nonphysical data. And if science has taught us anything at all over the past 2000 years, it has taught us to have faith that if we listen and looked carefully enough we will be able to translate that data into rational sentences such as “Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared” and “6CO2 + 6H2O + sunlightC6H12O6 + 6O2”.
(I’m carrying this over from another stream.) I’m saying that our brains cannot perceive immaterial phenomena, and that it is a mistake to presuppose that they can (i.e. to say, “I perceive it; therefore, my brain perceives it because I am my brain.”). So when you ask about perceiving “constructs” I immediately respond that “constructs” is an abstract word that cannot be seen, heard, tasted, felt or smelled.
For example, a circle is a very simple logical construct. From the drawing of a circle we can get an approximation of pi (3.14…) though we have hundreds of other ways to get that number. But what physical properties do circles have? Are they liquid (such as the ripples in a pond), solid (such as the rings of Saturn), gas (such as smoke rings), or pure light (such as a rainbow)? You can’t say that they are all four at once. Do they have any texture at all? Do they have a particular sound—“circle”, “Kreis”, “κύκλος”, “دائرة”, or “圈”? Do they have any chemical properties? Do they have any force or effect on anything? No, of course not. They have no material properties at all. The circle is simply an idea, an expression of pure meaning that can be translated into any language through an uncountable number of media—as a lead drawing on paper, as circuits in a pen drive, as “a closed curve all of whose points are equal distance from a given point called the center” (I learned that definition in sixth grade), etc.
I can use my brain to perceive it just like I can use a telescope to perceive the Andromeda Galaxy. But how could my brain itself perceive the circle any more than the telescope can perceive Andromeda?