Steiner argues that the self-contradictory worldview described below, i.e., the worldview based on assigning perceptible qualities to hypothetical constructs, is the basis of metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism, moreover, is "a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism (111)," involving objects of perception in flux, and unperceivable forces that cause these objects to change. While metaphysical realism admits that thinking is necessary for acquiring knowledge of the objects of perception, it fails to properly acknowledge the importance of the "concept" as the substance of the relationship between perceptions acquired through thinking (we should remember that Steiner earlier (p 46) characterized concepts as the ideas that remain after the object of perception is gone from view).
Accordingly, when we dispense with the hypothetical constructs of metaphysical realism, we are left with perceptions and the concepts which make their relationships intelligible.
"When metaphysical realism asserts that, besides the ideal relationship between the object of perception and its perceiving subject, there must exist in addition a real relationship between the 'thing-in-itself' of the perception and the 'thing-in-itself' of the perceivable subject...this assertion rests upon the incorrect assumption of an unperceivable real process analogous to the processes of the sense world (112)."
When metaphysical realism dispenses with the hypothetical constructs of these unperceivable forces, processes, and "things-in-themselves," the result is "monism," uniting, as it does, concept with perception without any artificial mediating processes.
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