Phenomenon and Truth: Toward an Operative Phenomenological Realism

This article advances an operative form of phenomenological realism grounded in the axiom that “what has not shown itself is not yet.” Truth is treated not as a static property but as an ontological event of donation, articulated through a hinge between Realism of the Ontological Event (ROE) and Epistemic Inferentialism (EI), which integrates the Sellarsian critique of the “Myth of the Given” without collapsing into coherentism. Truth persists through modalities of trace: the reinstantiable R-trace of replicable laboratory phenomena and the archival A-trace of singular events, both possessing equal ontological dignity. Applying this framework to quantum physics, I argue for ontological neutrality until donation: interpretations gain commitment only when they generate new forms of appearing. To make this operative, I propose an L1–L4 hierarchy with thresholds involving replication, inter-instrumental convergence, counterfactual controls, statistical preregistration, open traceability, and temporal durability. This approach reframes truth across philosophical and scientific practice.