What do you mean observable reality doesn’t prove we see images from the past? Is that not the entire basis of history?
It seems to me that you are all tangled up in time. The present you say is the only thing yet it is the most illusory, temporary. Future and past are inevitable and always going to be, non temporary. The present moment and our being confined to it is what poses all of the philosophical questions regarding existence and functioning, it’s due to being always near future or recent past and not knowing what to do with the time of which is an individual. It seems present but I assure you that you don’t know or feel the cell in your body that just died to pass information to the next gen of cells and it continues. That present moment is over, because it’s a constant stretched thing that must be broken up into different periods. Which we have done. With no future or past, the present is not possible at all.
So how is the present the only thing again? In the mind, it can travel into past and future imagery. It’s already been proven. Instincts, mental illnesses, etc. there’s no discretion of time to the sub/unconscious mind.
You think too empirically. We aren’t talking about the body and physically going back in time. We’re talking about the mind.
Logic without reason is a waste of time thinking, philosophically. There’s quotes on it.