Things are Exactly as They Appear to Be

My father used to often remark that "things are never what they seem to be". This remark usually referred to a conundrum or disppointment in my social life, something not working out---the best guy not getting the position or job, etc.. Things are not what they appear to be is a wise remark. However, I say that things are exactly as they are (that is, as they appear to be).

Realist Psychology begins with the actual fact or thing, and asks how must the universe be that such a phenomenon is possible. For example, a chipmunk scurries quickly across my porch. Call it a phenomenon, a scurrying four-legged mini-mammal---in other words attempt to decompose the experience of the 'chipmunk' to other substrates or ingredients in an effort to better grasp the chipmunk. One can see that the vast domains of scientific inquiry whether in isolation or in terms of systematic inquiry (quantum mechanics, neuroscience, cybernetics, bioevolution---or the integral synthesis of all of these meta-theories), all proceed toward a goal of better understanding of the phenomenon via analysis. But I say that the total grasp of a given phenomenon cannot be enhanced one iota by turning away from the thing.

For example, I am looking at a candle. This event occurs now. I am reporting this event. I have this experience---the truth of this candle along with an immediate grasping of the candle with nothing left over---the truth only manifests to human beings in now moments.

Almost without exception philosophers and scientists, phenomenologists, theologians, neuroscientists and quantum physicists in the present era all move away (above, below, supra, infra, outside, beyond, within, etc...) from the given thing in order to 'better' explain this thing. This has been a constant and constitutive theme of modern psychology. There is the assumption that decomposition of a thing better reveals the truth of this thing, as for example, this candle is "better" understood as wax, fire and wick, and brass candlestick, and so on... And wax is "better" understood molecularly, and the experience of the candle is "better" understood as a neuroscientific event, and that the synthesis of knowing this candlelight is better grasped through quantum mechanics.

Descartes moved away from the experience of the candle wax through "imaginative counterfactual". He also employed a 'paranoid' consciousness, that things are not what they seem to be ('le malin genie')---brilliant literary trope! Philosophy? No. The modern experience of pychology initiates wthis turning away from truth which is actually prior to 'ego cogito'---thus ending the medieval realist psychology.

Theologians also move away from the phenomenon in an effort to better grasp or explain how the phenomenon and experience of the candlelight is better grasped through a theology of transcendent creation (either before, or simultaneous). It does no such thing! It is not by turning to the past or the future, nor by turning outward (macro) or inward (macro) in space, that one discovers the truth. The truth does not need to be abandoned in its immediate primacy in the here and now, as it is revealed in common sense. St. Augustine seems to be on the right track here---with his 'transcende te ipsum': "Do not go outside. Return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth. If you find that you are by nature mutable, transcend yourself!" [Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas. Et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, transcende te ipsum. De Vera Religione]

The truth of the candle's unique being is not improved through any such effort, whether scientific, theological, or cybernetic. The very truth of the candle is given entirely in the experience with the candle.

The only legitimate task for science is as follows: to ask how is it possible that things appear to be as they are and not otherwise? This is the direction we take in Realist Psychology.

Several deductions are valid.
#1 Truth appears.
#2 Truth appears now.
#3 Truth appears to a human being (evenso, there is no reason to imagine that other mammals do not grasp the truth of acorns, wet branches in a tree, etc...).
#4 Ontology: the universe is composed of 'real' things, and the universe itself is 'real'.
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Here we have an adequate beginning point: this day and the trees and hills and rabbits precisely as they are (as they appear to us) [this so called modern/phenomenological distinction between things being and appearing is not valid, honest or truthfull]. This chipmunk is grasped immediately as 'this chipmunk'!

We are not saying that scientific analysis fails to give more data or information about the litle rodent, it most certainly does, but in each step it moves away from the truth of seeing the chipmunk---it looks away from the truth! It discovers new realities such as atoms, molecules, quantum numbers, etc... And each of these newly grasped truths are real. But each one in its own present is revealed. One does not simultaneously grasp the apple at the same time that one grasps the apple's molecular composition. Truth can only be grasped directly by looking at real things. Only one real thing appears at a time! So the molecular account of an apple's material being is precisely that: a true account of the molecular being of an apple. But the initial apple is still precisely this: an apple. Certainly, the empirical scientist discovers new 'facts' through an analytic interrrogation of the phenomenon. Actually multiplying entities without necessity violating Ockam's law. So then instead of a chipmunk we have chipmunk=experience of (neurons, optical perception, ego) chipmunk (4 legged miniature mammal, belongs to rodent family, etc., etc.) an this goes on ad infinitum but never gets back to exactly this chipmunk!

Nor is the truth of this little beast finally re-constructed in a grand meta-narrative such as Sociobiology or Quantum Mechanics or any other type of Systematics.