At least Aquinas was aware of this, defining the "first act act of the mind is to apprehend reality in its intelligibility which is twofold: 1) the fact of its existence and 2) the fact of its essence or nature."
This primary object of the mind, twofold in its being, is not God, nor self, but the being that exists in the world outside the mind. We can only know this real being through our senses, but what is grasped as intelligible in the sense-object is grasped immediately in and from the sense- object by the intellect, first as it recognizes an existing thing as existing , i.e., as real, and secondly, as it recognizes the existing thing as some kind of being.
You might find this interesting.
First let me say it is nice when someone disagrees without being disagreeable. I appreciate that.
The quote above is an example of what I said earlier, "all of the old philosophers were never careful to identify and distinguish the difference between percepts (direct consciousness) and concepts (the identification of entities, events, and ideas...." I think Aquinas did have "perception" in mind when he used the term "apprehension." Other philosophers sometimes refer to perception as simple or immediate apprehension.
My point was that "1) the fact of its existence and 2) the fact of its essence or nature," are the very things perception does not provide. The "interpretation" of perception, that is, the assigning of an identity to what is perceived is at the conceptual level.
For example, I perceive a red circular patch. That perception provides nothing in itself except the fact of the percept. It is at the conceptual level that one can say, "I just rubbed my eyes, and the pressure produced the "red" spot," or "I've been looking at that green circle and the red spot is just the reaction of looking away now at the white wall," or, "I see an apple."
So even the "existence" of what is perceived is not directly perceived, nor can it be until what is perceived is identified. Again, I say, at the perceptual level, we know nothing.
Hank