Question

Hello and blessings, Rabbi.
I’ll be brief — a certain scholar challenged me regarding the proof from epistemology: as long as one does not assume a correspondence between cognition and reality, it is not valid (for then it would be impossible to know God).
If you have already assumed that correspondence, you can also accept the explanation of it and its emergence from evolution (for present purposes there is no need to get into whether natural selection creates a correspondence between cognition and the world, an argument that does not hold water).
 
My question is: why does the recognition of the correspondence take precedence over cognition itself (and as a result, the recognition of God)? After all, it is impossible to recognize the “correspondence” between cognition and reality without cognition itself.
 
If the question spills over into more theoretical territory, I would be glad if you could refer me to those places.
An idea for an answer that occurred to me is the distinction between thinking and cognition that you explained in “Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon,” but the matter is still not really clear to me.
 
Thank you very much, honored Rabbi.