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Thank you all for the feedback so far. I was(am) surprised at the resistance to the the suggestion that all variation might be continuous and that any patterns we recognize from that variation is only an artifact of our "filter" - our innate ability to decode.  Perhaps, it could be a bit of both.  Perhaps much of what we discern as discrete, non-overlapping patterns in nature is due to our filter, but in addition, nature may have some characteristics of "clumpiness."

How would we know difference?  Here, the best solution I know of to date is not trying to discover the truth from "nowhere" - completely unbiased, but instead attempt to suss out the truth from the "point of view from everywhere".  Only with many view points do we dilute individual bias.

It is more than likely we will not be able to agree on this supposition, but for the time being we could agree to entertain the idea that at least most of reality is only an amalgam of biased/filtered constructs.  Individuals come together with their own unique(weird) constructs and the consensus that emerges after debate and collaboration is our best model of "reality".  If we can agree to entertain this for the moment, we can proceed to investigate the ramification of such a view of nature on intention, meaning, and aesthetics.

On the other hand, no reason to proceed if the starting assumptions are still highly suspect.  All I really wanted to suggest in the first half of my presentation was that patterns (hence constructs of reality) are observer dependent.  That may seem obvious, put it does have interesting ramifications - I think?