If there were a background to appearance, if phenomenal reality were like little bubble worlds of light popping and bursting in a deep blue night, or were staged by a divine puppeteer in the theatre of an absolute eye, then this background would also be appearance and an infinite regress would follow. Any context of time and space, anything metaphysical, all may be true in some possible world, is appearance. What can be said then about what is actually happening? Only that it is exactly like this and you can't say you don't know.