Living with the noumenon

The Wiki article on 'noumenon' says 'The Greek word ???????o? nooúmenon, plural ???????? nooúmena, is the neuter middle-passive present participle of ????? noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word ???? noûs, an Attic contracted form of ???? nóos "perception, understanding, mind". A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought" '

(Also note the word is not related to 'the numinous' which has another root and another meaning altogether.)

So I take 'the noumenon' to mean something like 'the ideal object'. The 'ideal object' would be grasped solely by the intellect and so would be grasped perfectly, in the way that an intelligible object is (such as a number), but an object of sense is only ever seen from a perspective, and not 'as it is in itself'.

I understand it to signify a limitation of the nature of cognition, i.e. we are only able to perceive sensible objects as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. I don't see it as being the radical claim that many seem to; the fact that what we know by way of the senses is the realm of phenomena, is something that I think can't be denied. But I think it obviously poses a problem for naive or even for scientific realism, which tends not to be critically self-aware in the way required by this kind of analysis.

Also, you might appreciate this blog post

We have eyes, therefore we cannot see; we have minds, therefore we cannot understand; we have fingers therefore we cannot touch.

See also Stove's Gem.

Reply to unenlightened I studied under Stove; liked him a lot but I think his 'gem' only indicates a lack of insight into Kant and idealism generally.

What quandry? Kant's thing in itself is not a real thing but a definition of a limit for possible knowledge: i.e. a thing stripped of every property, so there is simply nothing left to know about it hence "impossible" to know in a trivial sense.

Reply to Wayfarer Ah, so it's insight that makes one blind.

Reply to jkop It's a quandry for me and I see it as an issue which philosophy has a requirement to address.
Presumably unless one is an idealist (and idealists might also be in this group), there is something existing beyond sensory experience and the intellect, so why not seek what philosophy can tell us about it?

Ah, so it's insight that makes one blind.

Reply to unenlightened

Perhaps it is thought that is the blinker.

Thanks for the link to Stove's Gem, I'll have a look.

So I take 'the noumenon' to mean something like 'the ideal object'. The 'ideal object' would be grasped solely by the intellect and so would be grasped perfectly, in the way that an intelligible object is (such as a number), but an object of sense is only ever seen from a perspective, and not 'as it is in itself'.

Reply to Wayfarer I'm thinking more about the object of sense, although also the ideal object in the sense that it might take a form beyond its conception in the mind of a human.

Quoting Punshhh

I am thinking of the quandry that philosophers talk about the impossibility of understanding or knowing the noumenon(the thing in itself), while it is rational to consider that we are that noumenon, everything we know is constituted of this noumenon and nothing else. So in a sense we are this thing we can't know. Our nature and the nature of the noumenon are the same, can a study of nature, or our nature, inform us of the nature of the noumenon, so that it can be known?

Do you accept that there is a noumenon? Do you think it can be known? Do you think that our nature is the same as the nature of the noumenon.? If philosophy can't answer these questions, are there any other ways of knowing?

Schopenhauer wrote a whole four volume treatise on answering this question. He thought the noumenon can be known through understanding our own psychology. If you introspect you understand that you are this being that is always in a state of wanting and needing. This seems to be part and parcel of the bigger picture which is this blind insatiable force or principle which is blind striving that is never satisfied. In fact, he thought will was not a motivational force, but was the "inner aspect" of all things and any external phenomena had a double-coined internal aspect to it that was one and the same as Will.. the phenomenal individuated world of space/time/causality and objects was actually the flipside of the unified world of the principle of striving-after-nothing.

Quoting Punshhh

Do you accept that there is a noumenon?

Yes. I just don't believe that there's any good reason to buy that noumena are any different than phenomena.

Punshhh: I'm thinking more about the object of sense, although also the ideal object in the sense that it might take a form beyond its conception in the mind of a human.

I was referring to the meaning of the term - it is from the root 'nous', so the noumenon is an 'ideal object' in the sense that it is what nous is capable of grasping. The point about that is that in the classical Western tradition of philosophy, the mind knows 'intelligible objects', in effect, by identification with them - 'in thinking, and in knowledge which is a kind of thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible' (Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism).

So what Kant is saying, I believe, is that sensible objects (as he would call them) are not 'intelligible' in the sense above - so our knowledge of sensibles is the knowledge of phenomena, unlike knowledge of (for example) logical and mathematical proofs. That actually reflects the Platonic distinction between appearance and reality.

Reply to Wayfarer So "ideal object" is an object of thought, as opposed to an object of the senses. Yes I understand this, but it seems to be suggesting that the noumenon includes the contents of rational thought, hence rational thought might know the noumenon through reason?

Sensible objects have an intelligible part and an unintelligible part. The intelligible part can be known and understood by rational thought, so is in a sense expressing the ideal object? While the unintelligible part is inaccessible. I thought the noumenon was this inaccessible part, the thing in itself, this is the source of the confusion. Is it Kant who is caused this confusion do you think?

Reply to schopenhauer1 So did Schopenhauer use the classical definition of the noumenon? I understand he was critical of Kant's use of the word in saying it amounts to the thing in itself.

Quoting Punshhh

So did Schopenhauer use the classical definition of the noumenon? I understand he was critical of Kant's use of the word in saying it amounts to the thing in itself.

Yeah, he did not like the term.. replace it with Thing-in-Itself then. In terms of the world as it is intself and how it appears to us, it is similar.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Yes, it looks as though I am asking about Thing-in-itself. Is this what Schopenhauer was talking about in the work of his that you mentioned?

Quoting Punshhh

Yes, it looks as though I am asking about Thing-in-itself. Is this what Schopenhauer was talking about in the work of his that you mentioned?

Yes, in the World as Will and Representation.. These two articles are good introductions:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/schopenh/

Reply to schopenhauer1 Thanks, let's say there is will and representation going on. Is this in the sense in which this process results in our finding ourselves in the world we know? Or is it more in the sense that the process is in reconciling, or adjusting ourselves with our existence, or existence in this world?

Reply to Terrapin Station Agreed.

Quoting Punshhh

Thanks, let's say there is will and representation going on. Is this in the sense in which this process results in our finding ourselves in the world we know? Or is it more in the sense that the process is in reconciling, or adjusting ourselves with our existence, or existence in this world?

Can you clarify your question? I'd like to answer, but not sure exactly what you mean by reconciling with our existence and adjusting ourselves with our existence. His idea is essentially considered "pessimistic" as our lives cannot escape the underlying suffering that drives existence. The Will is trying to objectify itself by striving for goals that can never satisfy it. All objects are gradations of this overarching Will and at some level, the internal aspect of things are equivalent to Will. Thus, he has a kind of proto-panpsychism going on. Animals have more complex manifestations of Will and humans are the most complex manifestation. There are so many layers of emotional ways of suffering in the complex human mind. Most of it, according to Schop comes from the main pursuits of our existence which seem to be motivated from little other than boredom and survival needs. From this we become highly goal-seeking, transforming our boredom into goal-seeking pursuits. These goals cause suffering in their ceaseless end.. They represent the unsatisfied Will. We are always becoming but never being.

The very idea that you can comprehend a "thing" in itself without a context defies all the physical and rational evidence and is along the lines of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. All the evidence points to the human mind and brain being a self-organizing system that we cannot draw lines in the sand and demonstrate where the individual and their environment begin and end because a context without any content is simply a contradiction in terms.

I think of the noumenon as the raw input that our particular human kind of processing system interacts with.

We are entirely oblivious to the great majority of it--no awareness whatsoever,

Our systems respond to certain aspects of the noumenon for processing as raw material for sensory input,

Our system's standard operating practice is to filter out or ignore most of the raw material that we are capable of processing, according to what we happen to be attending to at the moment

Our experiences are the result of what our particular kind of systems generate from processing the raw material from our interaction with the noumena.

So, since we know that our experiences of things and the predicates we ascribe to them are highly processed, transduced, filtered, augmented, suppressed, organized and reorganized--essentially constructed--we have reason to infer that our experiences no more reflect what the things in themselves independently of our procesdsing are like, or even that they are individuated into discrete things, than we have to believe that the magnetic patterns in a hard drive are reflected pictures of the text, videos, etc..

A difference that makes no difference, but perhaps it's significant in some peculiar way to understand that we're humans and that's all we can be when it comes to knowing/thinking/doing anything. Not that it makes any difference.

I wouldn't use the word "comprehend," but I don't think that the notion that we can access or have knowledge by acquaintance of a thing-in-itself from a particular reference point defies any physical or "rational evidence."

Reply to Terrapin Station Well I think we do know it because we are it, of it. Although we may not understand what it is we know.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White Do you know who you are?

Reply to Brainglitch So it is a foil, or mirror of our evolutionarily inherited traits?

Reply to Punshhh Yeah . . . I'd just avoid "comprehend" because it seems like a category error to me. Rocks and such aren't attempted to communicate with us. ;-)

Reply to Punshhh


The things in themselves are objectively real in the sense that they are reliably available to be be perceived. It seems obvious from experience that they do not depend on anyone's, or even everyone's, perception of them in order to be said to exist in this sense. So, I have long thought that the empirical object is merely a formal identity, a kind of independent fact. The noumenal object and the empirical object are logically identical in one sense I would say, insofar as they are both formal or logical identities, that stand for, ultimately, 'whatever it is' that appears to us as some specific object of common experience. The difference is that the empirical formal identity is, for example, 'that tree' as it is itself, whereas the noumenal formal identity is the totally empty 'whatever it is' as it is in itself, that appears to us as that tree.

So, the empirical object seems to be just the logical projection of our in-common perception and conception of objects into the 'noumenal background'; in this sense it is a legitimate, if taken pragmatically, but an illegitimate, if taken substantively, objectification of the non-objective; or perhaps it would be better to say of the proto or even meta-objective. This 'position' really is not either idealist or realist in the commonly understood sense, because I do not posit either mind or matter as constitutive.

Quoting Brainglitch

I think of the noumenon as the raw input that our particular human kind of processing system interacts with.

So, is "our particular kind of processing system" itself noumenal or phenomenal? Because if you say it is phenomenal and that we have no warrant for saying that the phenomenal reflects the noumenal at all, then it would seem that we could have no warrant to say that the phenomenal interacts with the noumenal as you have said it does.

On the other hand, if you say it is noumenal, then you again contradict the idea that we have no warrant to speak of the nature of the noumenal. So, either way your position seems to be mired in incoherence.

Quoting Punshhh

Do you know who you are?

I wonder if there's a me-in-myself I should be concerned about. People do refer to the "real me" sometimes. For example, sometimes people say something like "You don't know the real me." This seems to imply that there is another me, different from the real one. Also, people sometimes say "I know you better than you know yourself." This seems to imply that others may know who I am better than I can.

But I know who I am, yes, as far as I can being what I am. I'm content enough with that. And as I say, if there's a me that can't really be known, it makes no difference that there is such a me.

Quoting Punshhh

. . Presumably. . . . . there is something existing beyond sensory experience and the intellect. . .

Sure, what one thinks of exists beyond the thought, what one experiences exists beyond the experience; anything one points at exists beyond the finger :) But you don't get to point at the unpointable, speak of the unspeakable, think the unthinkable etc..

We can speak, or think, of 'everything', 'every thing', 'anything' etc., so the very idea of something unspeakable is obviously false.

John:The things in themselves are objectively real in the sense that they are reliably available to be be perceived. It seems obvious from experience that they do not depend on anyone's, or even everyone's, perception of them in order to be said to exist in this sense.

But one can respond that they are still reliant on species-specific perceptions, i.e. they appear to h. sapiens with the senses we have, and in accordance with the social conventions according to which they are interpreted. Again, doesn't mean they're not real, but they're also not truly 'mind-independent'.

There is a well-known passage in Alan Moorehead's account of James Cook's discovery of Australia. Joseph Banks, the Endeavour's scientist, made a journal entry concerning what happened when the Endeavour anchored in Botany Bay. There was a group of aboriginals on the shore, not far distant (a league or so, i.e. a bit more than a mile) but in clear sight. However they paid no attention to the Endeavour at all, they just continued mending their nets and carried on. It wasn't until a long-boat was put down and rowed towards shore that they responded - as soon as the long-boat broke away from the Endeavour. Until then, they behaved as if they hadn't seen anything at all. We'll never know, of course, but I am inclined to think they didn't respond, because they literally couldn't cognize - not recognize, but cognize - such a profoundly alien object.

There are many comparable cases in cognitive sciences.

jkop:Kant's thing in itself is not a real thing but a definition of a limit for possible knowledge: i.e. a thing stripped of every property

I agree it's a limit for possible knowledge, but not that 'it is a thing stripped of properties'; that would be 'nothing'.

Punshhh:So "ideal object" is an object of thought, as opposed to an object of the senses. Yes I understand this, but it seems to be suggesting that the noumenon includes the contents of rational thought, hence rational thought might know the noumenon through reason?

Sensible objects have an intelligible part and an unintelligible part. The intelligible part can be known and understood by rational thought, so is in a sense expressing the ideal object? While the unintelligible part is inaccessible. I thought the noumenon was this inaccessible part, the thing in itself, this is the source of the confusion. Is it Kant who is caused this confusion do you think?

I don't think that 'the noumenon' is an object, or anything objective, or a part. Now this is a huge controversy, entire schools of 'neo-kantian philosophy' are defined around these arguments. But how I would portray it is as follows.

It is not as if there is an unknown object or an unknown world, like some shadowy presence standing behind the realm of sense, although that is how we have an almost unavoidable tendency to see it. But I think that image is created from the intuiton of ourselves as 'subjects in the domain of objects'. This is actually an historically-conditioned way of seeing things, and is distinctively modern; it is how moderns intuitively see themselves. It's part of the scientific image we grew up with; but it's also how Platonism came to be interpreted over the centuries as the duality of 'reality and appearance' with the reality being 'behind' or 'above' the domain of appearances. But I still think it's simply a simile or perhaps a metaphor, which is now taken literally.

Anyway I was doing a bit of research yesterday on a modern classical philosopher and found this gem of a quote (far superior to 'Stove's Gem', I can assure you):

'Understanding' is grasping how the data of sense (or of consciousness) are interrelated; it is adding to the manifold of the mere presentation a complex of relations, a meaning, that reduces the manifold to unity.  When this happens, the mind is able to pronounce the interior word that the tradition calls 'the concept'.

Later in that article:

Metaphysics anticipates the general structures of reality by formulating the way our knowing operates.

That philosopher - Bernard Lonergan - drew on Kant, although was very critical of him. But the point I'm trying to convey, is the sense in which the mind 'constructs' what we take to be real. And I think nowadays, we are instinctively conditioned by representative realism, to understand that 'construction' as being a representation or facsimile of what is external to it.

But in an important sense, nothing is external to it, insofar as whatever we know is situated in that matrix of understanding. But the realist part of ourselves, then tries to situate the understanding in respect of what we believe is 'out there anyway' - which is what we would like to think is 'the reality'.

But whatever we designate as 'real', is designated in accordance with that conceptual matrix. This is not to say that nothing is 'objective' - as John says above, there is an entire domain which is 'the same for any observer', which is what is objective. But the reality of it is also constituted by the act-of-knowing, in other words, there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to knowledge, even of purportedly mind-independent phenomena.

(If you think it through, you will realise that this all flows from the Enlightenment belief that we could 'sweep metaphysics off the table' and construct knowledge on the basis of what is given to the senses, taking that to be what is 'truly there'.)

Reply to Punshhh

The distinction is between knowing (representation) and existing (presence, living).

Knowledge of the noumenon is not impossible because of some hidden mystery the mind cannot grasp. It impossible because the noumenon is literally not knowledge. Knowledge, which is a state experience, is always a step away from the state it is awareness of. Even in within our experiences.

If I remember what that I was happy yesterday, it's is a different state to the happiness I lived. I know the representation of how I lived yesterday. I am not living the happiness of yesterday.If someone was know the noumenon, knowledge of something (e.g. my memory of past happiness) would have to amount to living or being it(e.g. the existence of the past state of happiness).

Reply to Wayfarer

I doubt the veracity of the story, and others like it, about the aboriginals not even being able to see the ship. Of course they would not have been able to see it as a ship. Even animals respond to what they have never seen before. Do you believe, for example, that a herd of wild cattle that had never seen anything like a road train would fail to respond to one moving towards them?

By "mind independent" all I meant to indicate is the logical entailment that, since objects are obviously not dependent on your mind or my mind or any mind, and since there is no 'sum of minds' in any ordinarily intelligible sense, objects
in themselves cannot rightly be thought as mind dependent.

Quoting Wayfarer

I agree it's a limit for possible knowledge, but not that 'it is a thing stripped of properties'; that would be 'nothing'.

That's Kant's distinction between appearance and thing, a thing without apperances. Only mystics or those in favour of the two-worlds-interpretation of the distinction claim they'd know that the thing would be unknowable, yet somehow real in a world beyond our world.

Reply to jkop I tried to explain it, sorry if I wasn't clear.

Reply to John That story is bona fide, Banks as you know was a scientist, he was meticulous in his journal notes, all he said was the Aboriginals did not react to the Endeavour. I see no reason not to believe what he wrote. He didn't say 'they didn't see it', he said they didn't react, I am simply speculating as to why.

The belief in the noumenon sounds kinda like the belief in god, magical thinking to use an old term :) ...I suppose that only he could guarantee that appearances cohere with with their noumenon

Reply to Punshhh

Quoting Punshhh

am thinking of the quandry that philosophers talk about the impossibility of understanding or knowing the noumenon(the thing in itself), while it is rational to consider that we are that noumenon, everything we know is constituted of this noumenon and nothing else. So in a sense we are this thing we can't know. Our nature and the nature of the noumenon are the same, can a study of nature, or our nature, inform us of the nature of the noumenon, so that it can be known?

Do you accept that there is a noumenon? Do you think it can be known? Do you think that our nature is the same as the nature of the noumenon.? If philosophy can't answer these questions, are there any other ways of knowing?

Do you accept that there is a noumenon?
Yes. I don't believe there could be phenomena without a noumenon. (Phenomena -> Noumenon).

Do you think it can be known?
I feel as though it can be known intuitively.


Do you think that our nature is the same as the nature of the noumenon?
What does 'our' refer to?

Reply to Ciceronianus the White Yes, but some would say "you are the noumenon, how could you be anything else?". This would suggest that to know the noumenon is to know yourself. To know yourself is to know the noumenon. I wonder if it would make any difference, if we were to understand the noumenon, to understand ourselves?

Reply to John Yes I understand what you are saying and I would largely agree. However I would add that where you say "just the logical projection of our in-common perception and conception of objects into the noumenal background". That our in-common perception and conception(and I would include the whole biosphere here), is accompanied by a bodily and an atmic component. By body I mean in the sense that a being, in essence, isn't simply a mind(in the broadest, or idealist sense), but incorporates a vehicle of presence, or being, which could loosely be described as a soul. Also that a being, in essence, also incorporates an atmic(atma) transcendent kernel, or spark of being, or life. I mention this because I regard such components as equally as necessary as the mind, in which we inhabit our experiences.

So one could imagine the scenario that a "soul" (the embryonic soul of the biosphere) incarnates, by projecting, or impressing its presence and nature onto a undiferentiated noumenal background. Such that the common experience of any being within that biosphere, is the same, of a world of persistent physical objects, which they inhabit as mortal beings.

Reply to Wayfarer Yes I know what you say about the way we are conditioned to view the physical world as given by science etc, and that the noumenal is some kind of shadowland. I relinquished such perspectives long ago and view the thing in itself rather like a marriage of some kind of malleable substrate(energy)(possibly dimensionless and unextended),( not meaning to sound to physicalist), with our nature which results in what we experience and a place were we find ourselves at birth.

So the noumenon could be a primordial soup (possibly unextended) of energy, a kind of mirror, a kind of thought experiment in the mind of someone in eternity. Or it could be like in the idea of the mirror, us, extruding our nature and experience as we go, being our own substrate.


Yes I like the description of a manifold of concepts. I use a system of thought like that, a kind of 3D library in my head, such that I can go to any shelf and access an idea I logged in the past. New ideas fly into the correct position on the shelves, within a grand schema, which I have creatively put together. An idea is grasped as it goes in, which might be the process described in your quote, that reduces the manifold to unity. A chime perhaps, it rings true.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Yes I agree, however this does not prevent my enquiry. I have mentioned, I think, that the living of experience is more than our conscious experience of it, our intellectual understanding of it. It is a complex process of immanence, which naturally is more subtle than our intellectual knowledge of it. For me the transcendent is here and now and does not require our intellect to know it.

Reply to Punshhh (Y)

Punshhh,
Do you agree, that noumenon is described by Kant, as "intelligible object", similar to what Wayfarer has explained? As such, it must be inherently knowable, under any consistent understanding of "intelligible object". The issue which Kant points out, is that it is not accessible through the understanding of, or knowing of phenomena, So we have a categorical separation between phenomena and noumena.

The issue I see is that Kant has created an epistemological principle, that knowing, knowledge, is of the phenomenal. Under traditional Platonic principles, the intellect may grasp intelligible objects directly, unmediated by phenomena, and this is the highest form of intelligence. This form of "intelligence" could not be classed as "knowledge" under the Kantian system. Because it is not understood as knowledge under the Kantian system, its status as intelligence is highly questionable. And the entire activity, which is described as the intellect grasping intelligible objects directly, without the mediation of sense, and phenomena, is doubtful. Then the whole intelligible realm appears as some sort of phantasm which is nonetheless real, something we know about, but can never really know.

Therefore, it is evident to me, that the Kantian categories are unacceptable. Something must be altered to bring the real noumena into the realm of "knowable", or else we have created a vast aspect of reality which is deemed unknowable. This is contrary to the philosophical mindset which is the desire to know, in an absolute sense.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover I haven't read Kant yet, so will take your word for it for now. I do think that the noumenon is knowable, but not because of the findings of a philosophical mindset specifically, but rather that it is natural for it to be so. Actually I do think that the noumenon can be known through knowledge of the empirical, wherein it is considered that the body is our medium of understanding, in concert with the mind, rather than the mind on its own as a purely rational entity. I say this because I doubt the human intellect can get there through reason alone, due to a lack of capacity and lack of appropriate orientation. This is why in mysticism and some religious practices a directed process of living and contemplation is practiced.

This is not to say that it could not be known through intellect alone, but not in this case.

Reply to schopenhauer1 I understand what you say here, it's interesting, but quite different to my perspective. So are you saying that it is the will which is directing the form of the representation, in its striving towards its goals?
Is the representation the experience of the being, or is that something else?

Quoting Punshhh

I understand what you say here, it's interesting, but quite different to my perspective. So are you saying that it is the will which is directing the form of the representation, in its striving towards its goals?
Is the representation the experience of the being, or is that something else?

Well this is Schop's ideas.. I'm just presenting them. I don't necessarily agree with his metaphysics, though I sympathize and have my own understanding similar to his. He does not explain how it is that an atemporal Will can "objectify" if it is monisitic, but this can be due to the nature of how hard it is to convey a non-spatial/temporal concept in a conceptual way. Also, he has to deal with the odd notion that if representation starts with the first organism and the Will is flipside of phenomena, the first organism has to be in an odd way eternal.. Perhaps if he pushed back representation to simply the first matter/energy, that might repair this, but then you have an eternal universe, which may or may not be true.

To answer your question, yes Will IS in a way the forms represented, somehow imbuing Platonic essences that will then be further individuated in space/time. I also have trouble accepting his Platonic Ideas in the metaphysics which seems to be a mediator for Will go from monistic flow, to individuated objects in space and time.

Quoting Punshhh

Yes, but some would say "you are the noumenon, how could you be anything else?". This would suggest that to know the noumenon is to know yourself. To know yourself is to know the noumenon. I wonder if it would make any difference, if we were to understand the noumenon, to understand ourselves?

Perhaps it's a failing in me, but I find it difficult to think of this issue as anything but trivial, when looked at in the abstract, at least. For me, the claim that we, as humans, are somehow constrained or limited by our senses or by anything else that makes us human, amounts to nothing more than the unsurprising observation that we're humans. What else should/could we be? We get along well enough regardless of whether the things we interact with daily are "really" something unknowable, but apparently still are the things we manage to interact with daily with some considerable success. The rock I stub my toe on may not be the rock-in-itself, but whatever the hell the rock-in-itself may be it's evidently something very much like the rock I stubbed my toe on.

Reply to Ciceronianus the White Yes, I'm inclined to agree with this, but I am an insatiable explorer of ideas, a magpie perhaps. Also I have come across some rarefied ideas and it's nice to share them.

Quoting Punshhh

So it is a foil, or mirror of our evolutionarily inherited traits?

Well, I think we cannot say much if anything meaningful about what the noumenon "is" in any sense other than that it is what we interact with via our particular evolved capabilities, and this interaction produces our particular creature experiences, by which we megotiate our way in the world.

Quoting John

So, is "our particular kind of processing system" itself noumenal or phenomenal? Because if you say it is phenomenal and that we have no warrant for saying that the phenomenal reflects the noumenal at all, then it would seem that we could have no warrant to say that the phenomenal interacts with the noumenal as you have said it does.

On the other hand, if you say it is noumenal, then you again contradict the idea that we have no warrant to speak of the nature of the noumenal. So, either way your position seems to be mired in incoherence.

The way I think of it is this: "our particular kind of processing system" is phemomemal--a conceptualization, a mental construct--based on certain phenomena which are grounded in the noumenon/ And the noumenon also is a mental construct, one inferred from phenomenal experience as a realist hypothesis to explain the source or ground of phenomenal experience.

Reply to Brainglitch

So, for you there is nothing at all, in the sense of nothing real beyond the phenomenal, then?

Quoting John

So, for you there is nothing at all, in the sense of nothing real beyond the phenomenal, then?

???

I specifically said that the noumenon is a realist hypothesis.

It is proposed as the reality on which our phenomenal experiences are grounded. But since all we actually have access to are our phenomenal experiences, which are specific to the kind of creature we are, the kind of processing our particular systems produce in our interaction with the noumenon, we can say nothing about the noumenon except that it is the source or ground for those experiences. We have no way even in principle of telling what the noumenon is like--in itself--independently of our processing.

Reply to Brainglitch

But what use is a 'reality' which never be real to us; but rather only the source of endless skepticism?

It's a speculative metaphysical hypothesis, John--a way of explaining our experiences.

Just as alternative ways of explaining our experiences include that they are all there is (idealism), or our experiences are accurate, essentially mirrored, reflections of the way the world out there independently of us really is (naive realism), or are generated in us by the evil demon or by God or by the Matrix

Reply to Brainglitch

But the problem is the bare noumenon hypothesis doesn't actually explain our experience at all, but rather it says that we can never know (discursively at least) the source of that experience.

Quoting Brainglitch

The way I think of it is this: "our particular kind of processing system" is phemomemal--a conceptualization, a mental construct--based on certain phenomena which are grounded in the noumenon/ And the noumenon also is a mental construct, one inferred from phenomenal experience as a realist hypothesis to explain the source or ground of phenomenal experience.

Isn't it necessary, that as real existing things which can be seen and heard by others, we are also ourselves noumenal? So why would we not be able to have direct access to the noumenal through our inner selves?

Quoting John

But the problem is the bare noumenon hypothesis doesn't actually explain our experience at all, but rather it says that we can never know (discursively at least) the source of that experience.

The notion of the noumenon is reecognition of a limit about what it is possible for us to to know about our experiences.

Reply to Brainglitch

What it is possible to know from the deliverances of pure reason and empirical observation, yes.

Reply to Punshhh

The problem is it is that which renders your quest incoherent. To seek knowledge of noumenon is to consider in conceptual terms, to seek to reduce into an experience of knowledge. You are trying to make into the intellectual, to create a situation where the awe and wonder of the noumenon are reduced to a particular conceptual space.

It's the promise of the transcendent-- think in this way and you will be better, not by living, but by merely thinking in conceptual terms.

The transcendent is an attempted conceptualisation of the noumenon. God transcends our failures. In knowing God, we (supposedly) become changed, live a better life. An idea of the transcendent sits as a beacon, the thought of living a better life, always beyond our living. An awe inspiring promise of our own improvement-- just sit back and think of the transcendent.

But it's a deception. The better life beyond us is one we never own. Improvement in living comes down to our existing, not the transcendent promise. We need to live it, not just think the idea of being better.

Reply to schopenhauer1 Ok, thanks. I am not likely to read Schopenhauer any time soon as my lifestyle is to busy to do much reading at the moment. It does sound like a nod in the direction of the spiritual, which is also my direction.

You raise some interesting points, firstly, to account for the objectification of an atemporal monistic will. I see this as an issue from every perspective(apart from those that ignore it), as I see it the issue is in our capacity, or conceptual language to account for it sufficiently. In reality I suspect that we are ill equipped to grasp such areas of the existent, that it is of a different form of existence to what we are equipped to deal with and may be veiled to us for various reasons, the obvious reason being that it is as a mechanism by which our very presence is engineered, hence can't be conceived by that which it produces, by analogy a telescope is not designed to see its own workings, but rather some view in the far distance.

Having said this, it is something which I contemplate and for me the solution is in the form of a transcendent process, in which it is realised that dimensional differences and the spatiotemporal extension we find ourselves in, are from the stand point of the atemporal a construct, one in which there is, from the view point of the atemporal, a revealing, or illumination through processes or emanation,or percolation. This necessarily presumes an eternity which is a mediator between us and the monistic source and that the technology of that eternity is sufficient to perform the construct.

Regarding the "first organism", I see it more as a step change from an eternal organism through a budding process.

The issue of eternity is implicit in these explanations, but need not be problematic, if one realises that it need not necessarily involve infinity, which is a human invention. Also the omni's suffer from the same issues of regression. But aside from this, I don't see it as a requirement for us to grasp by analogy the lens of the telescope, when we are explaining the trees on the horizon, but rather to accept that there is a telescope, which is seeing, and look to the bigger picture and realise our predicament for what it is.

Regarding the platonic forms, well eternity crops up again, in that what appears universal to us, is in eternity, an individual notion.

Well, I think we cannot say much if anything meaningful about what the noumenon "is" in any sense other than that it is what we interact with via our particular evolved capabilities, and this interaction produces our particular creature experiences, by which we megotiate our way in the world.

Reply to Brainglitch Yes, via the philosophical rational route perhaps, but there are other ways to know the noumenon, to reconcile ourselves with our predicament and look to ourselves.

The way I think of it is this: "our particular kind of processing system" is phemomemal--a conceptualization, a mental construct--based on certain phenomena which are grounded in the noumenon/ And the noumenon also is a mental construct, one inferred from phenomenal experience as a realist hypothesis to explain the source or ground of phenomenal experience.

Reply to Brainglitch Well yes this can work as a rationalisation, but to relegate the noumenon to a "mental construct" is to ignore its possible existence external to the human mind. Or are you simply adding a further layer of phenomena between us and the noumenon and calling it a ground?

Also you may be correct in saying that we can't rationalise the noumenon, but this does not mean that it cannot be explorered and known by other means.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I may appear to be attempting to reduce the noumenon to a conceptual space, but this conceptual space is a tool of apprehension in a sense, used in contemplation to develop a living awareness of myself as a living being, in communion with the noumenon. You see it is through the development of communion(prayer) that one knows absent intellectualisation.

I do understand what you say about transcendence, but this is not what I am doing, as I have said, I am content here and now. This exercise in knowing is a practice, a lifestyle, a hobby, a pastime.

Metaphysician Undercover:Therefore, it is evident to me, that the Kantian categories are unacceptable. Something must be altered to bring the real noumena into the realm of "knowable", or else we have created a vast aspect of reality which is deemed unknowable. This is contrary to the philosophical mindset which is the desire to know, in an absolute sense.

The categories of the understanding in Kant were adapted from Aristotle.

Metaphysician Undercover:The issue I see is that Kant has created an epistemological principle, that knowing, knowledge, is of the phenomenal

'Kant does not believe that material objects are unknowable or impossible. While Kant is a transcendental idealist--he believes the nature of objects as they are in themselves is unknowable to us--knowledge of appearances is nevertheless possible.'

IEP

This actually allows for the possibility that knowledge of phenomena, whilst effective in its domain, is also radically limited in some fundamental sense. I don't have a hard time accepting that idea.

The Platonist tradition, in the broader sense, does entertain the notion that what we think we know, is in some sense an illusion. That is challenging, as we are strongly disposed to a kind of common-sense realism by both nature and culture; it doesn't occur to us that there may be a sense in which the common-sense and even scientific account of the world is in some sense illusory or mistaken. But in ancient philosophy, it was believed that the masses of people - the hoi polloi - are profoundly mistaken about what they think they know, as illustrated in the Allegory of the Cave.

What is lacking in Kant is any real sense of transcending the bounds of the merely empirical. He says he is an empirical realist and transcendental idealist - if the empirical realist knows the empirical world, what does the transcendental idealist know?

(Actually, I first encountered Kant through a book called The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti. Murti was an Indian academic who had been trained in Western philosophy. This book has extensive comparisons between Kant, Hegel, Berkeley, and Mahayana Buddhism, specifically the school known as 'madhyamika' (middle way) which is the seminal philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. That has a great deal to say about transcendental wisdom, Prajñ?p?ramit?. That book has fallen out of favour somewhat but it certainly helped me get my bearings with this topic.)

Reply to Punshhh

Do you accept that there is a noumenon? Do you think that it can be known? Do you think that our nature is the same as the nature of the noumenon? If philosophy can't answer these questions, then are there any other ways of knowing them?

I wonder if there is noumenon, might it not be of two types: natural and man made.

Where natural noumenon...trees, man, and other natural items cannot be known because their existence strictly contingent,particular, only possible, not necessary with no telos. We can only know their appearance.

Man made things, swings, homes, cars and the rest have a subjectivity/telos/necessity built into their being they are objective/subjective in themselves. Their being is wrapped up in us, and unlike nature's works, our works can be known, the subjectivity that inheres in man made things make them knowable beyond their appearance... if that makes any sense.

Reply to Wayfarer

Yes, that's fair enough. I guess I do have great difficulty believing that they would not have seen the ship. And why they would not react, if indeed they did not react; I cannot begin to guess; it does seem very odd given that a ship like that would have been so unfamiliar to them.

Reply to Punshhh

I would agree with you about the "atmic" component. I would refer to it as 'spirit'. We are body, mind and spirit which reflects the Holy Trinity as well as many other trinitarian concepts in other religions. The idea I favour is that we (and the world) are 'three-in-one' (created in the image of the Father), and I think the limitation with Kant is that he substitutes practical reason for the spirit; not allowing that it could be possible to know the noumenal via the spirit. I think the problem philosophers commonly have in accepting this notion is that knowledge 'from the spirit' is not like either the concretely determinate empirical knowledge from the senses, or like the logically determinate a priori knowledge from the mind.

Schopenhauer came up before and I think he got it right that we know something of the noumenal via the will, but I think he was very wrong to think that the will is nothing more than a blind irrational striving. Such an idea comes from positing an unbreakable determinism operating on the will, that there is nothing influencing it beyond an ineluctable causality and that it cannot be determined by rationality and spiritual intuition; but must instead be renounced. The anomaly lies in the fact that any effective renunciation of the irrational will must itself be an act of rational will, informed by spiritual intuition.

Reply to John Yes, spirit works for me, I prefer atman because it fits into a comprehensive philosophy and practice in Hinduism and my mysticism is primarily based around this*, with an important influence from both Christianity and Buddhism. The trinity works well for me, I use father mother son. The principle of the father, the principle of the mother, the principle of the son and draw correspondences thus;

Father = spirit = Will = transcendent = creator = | = 1 = monistic
Mother = body = Presence = immanent = noumenon = O = 2 = dualistic
Son = mind = Action = subject = being = + = 3 = triadic

This trinity can be extended into everything, so for me everything has three grammatical genders, or principles or number(the first, the second, the third, principles).

I would point out in relation to my mention of the body in knowing of the noumenon, by body I mean soul(or its equivalent), for me the physical body is little more than a clothing or sheath for the soul. So for the mystic it is primarily through the medium of the soul that the noumenon is known. The spirit being a more transcendent presence and is more of a source for both soul and noumenon.

Yes I know what you mean about Schopenhauer, when I heard of his "will", it reminded me of the sexual urge of Freud. A kind of brute angst.


* I'm referring to yoga, for example the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Reply to Cavacava I think the noumenon is poorly defined. As I see it the noumenon is the only actually existing substance(in our world). I agree it can be divided into the two categories you mention.

By introducing the idea of substance, for me, I am introducing a deep mystery, about the means by which an actual substance comes to exist and how the immaterial and the material(physical) is emergent from it.

Reply to Punshhh

That's they very illusion I'm talking about. Prayer is lived. It is not transcendent at all.

I'm not talking about the allure of a conceptual saviour. The issue isn't some imagined safety and victory through a particular concept. It is, rather, a blindness to oneself; a failure to understand that the absence of "intellectual concern" is a practice of one's life rather than something "beyond."

The transcendent is a conceptual notion. A concept of living as opposed to "intellectualising," which is mistaken for the presence (or noumenon) of life itself. An ideality-- "If I think 'outside the intellectual,' then I will access life rather than mere knowledge"-- as if having the concept of what's beyond knowledge amounted to living. It's not true. The transcendent is only another concept.

Now this is not to say those who have the concept of the transcendent do not live. Many people who hold the concept of the transcendent live well. They, however, do so through their lives, not through a transcendent force. In the act of prayer, one lives beyond knowledge, is enacting a practice which other than mere knowing.

The story of the transcendent doesn't get life wrong. Those who believe it really live beyond knowledge. Rather, it gets knowledge wrong. It tells a falsehood about ourselves in relation to knowledge. It confuses the distinction between knowledge and life as a problem for knowledge and understanding, as if life ought to be knowledge.

In this respect, the transcendent does not respect life. It gets treated as a question of knowledge. As if living were about having a transcendent concept rather than being a state of existence. Here the function of the transcendent becomes clear: it is a tool for assert a hierarchy within knowledge, belief, values and cultural practice.

Everyone is by definition more than knowledge. No matter who someone is, they are a state of the world rather than just a representative concept. Quite literally everyone lives, not matter the time or place. The way the transcendent works is by denying this. If someone doesn't have the transcendent concept, then they supposedly failure to live. Not question of harm of ethics, but a literal view that those without the transcendent don't even count as life.

If someone is greedy and burdened by an endless quest for more possessions, they are supposed to be stuck "intellectualising," so obsessed with the idea of possessing more, that they do not live in the world beyond concepts. The transcendent is then posed as a solution to this, as THE remedy to become a living being--e.g. "Stop thinking about those possessions. Value the transcendent instead. Then you will live."

But it's not true. The truth is the greedy person with a horrible life is no less "beyond knowledge" than any contented person. That's why the solution to the greedy one's problem cannot simply be saying: "Well, I am content." It takes more than a concept. They need exist in a contented state.

So the truth there are many more ways to solve the greedy person's problem than the proponent of the transcendent would have us believe. The issue is not that the greedy person lacks life, it's the ways they are thinking and acting which are damaging. Any outcome in which those practices are avoided will work. In some of them, they would even keep a focus on material possessions.

The transcendent is a falsehood. What it says we need isn't true. We always have life beyond knowledge. Problems we encounter may solved in many more ways than with the transcendent concept. No doubt transcendent belief can function as a solution, but is tells a falsehood of how it does so. It's always us living, not a realm of beyond.

TheWillowOfDarkness: Prayer is lived. It is not transcendent at all.

The rationale for prayer is that it connects you to the transcendent. That is the meaning of the Biblical verse, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.'

I think the triadic structure Punshhh suggests above is a good interpretation.

Reply to Wayfarer

For sure, the point is to think about the transcendent concept to the exclusion of everything else. Pray think and value God (the transcendent in this case) rather than about anything found in the world. In doing this one "communicates" with the transcendent, feels the wonder, awe and real truth. As far as this goes, it works.

However, it is all you. You are the one that feels. One "communicates" with the transcendent not by speaking to it, but feeling the presence themselves. This is reflected in how many people say one has "to be open to it" for "communication" with the transcendent to occur. It's a person existence that matters, what they feel, which defines the presence of this communication or not.

God does not any action upon someone to think this way. They have to do it, a question not of God's existence, but of the worldly state of the individual. If someone is in the state of rejecting the transcendent the communication of prayer is impossible.

As a "real" state (or rather an irreal state--a thing of a realm someone may know conceptually or interact with), the transcendent is an illusion. The communication of prayer is entirely worldly, a particular way of thinking and valuing of an individual (e.g. "for the treasures of heaven, not the possessions of the world" ).

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness I do see all as within the self in the world, to the extent that it is focussed equally in myself in the world as if I were being a solipsist. But also I am a being in the world in which I live, in the moment, here and now. This is why I have said I agree with you. I am trying to say that imminent in the being is a transcendence, but not to some other place, but to the self, to the lived world.

Reply to Punshhh

Hence the illusion of transcendence-- that's just immanence. Sometimes people call or think this immanence is "transcendence." The thinking of the concept of the transcendence can be the expression of immanent.

Within the transcendental narrative, the concept of transcendence becomes attached to the expression or a meaningful life and so the concept comes to represent the immanent expression. People mistake immanence (the expression of the transcendent concept) for the presence of an outside force which defines meaning.

You right about life (the transcendent concept is an expression of meaning), but wrong about knowledge. You won't describe the transcendent for what it is. You maintain and defend the distinction of transcendence as a force or presence. Transcendence is immanent, not the other way around.

I think this comes out in your reading of self too. With respect to the self, my point is the opposite. All is not within the self at all. The immanence of prayer is not everything. Someone who communicates with the transcendent in prayer is not everything and they are certainly not thinking about the whole world. To think as if one were a solipsist is to make a grave error.

The self is defined by the opposite, by being a difference from everything else. No matter what we do, we'll only be and know a fraction of the world. My point wasn't that all was of the self, it was specifically, that the act of prayer was of the self, meaning it was not an act involving a transcendent force.

So is the self a mirror image of the different?
Is the different a representation of the self reflected?

I am unacquainted with your idea of meaning and the infinity of meaning. I will have to give it some more thought. Can you answer how meaning in the self relates to meaning in the world

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

My point wasn't that all was of the self, it was specifically, that the act of prayer was of the self, meaning it was not an act involving a transcendent force

I don't disagree with this, but I think the self is more than I take you to think it is. So prayer does not involve some objectified or externally transcendent 'force'. The way I think about it, it involves an immanent internally transcendent spirit. That said, you also have to realize that what is said is just what is said, and nothing more; although it can certainly point or fail to point, like the needle of a compass, at something more.

Reply to Punshhh

The self is an expression of an existing difference-- the meaning of a individual subject who is distinct from all other things. It cannot be reduced to say everything is one. In a sense it is noumenon, the living of an individual distinct from all other states. (all other states of the world are, similarly, noumenon in this way.)

Representations of self is a bit of a different question. They are ways of thinking or understanding the self. The first paragraph of this post, for example, is a representation of self. It's a concept or knowledge about the self, rather than the self itself. I might be giving an accurate description of the self, but that representation isn't the self-itself. (as a contrast, I could misunderstand the self, I could be a solipsist, and the self-itself would still be so. I would still be a subject distinct form all other things. I just wouldn't realise it).

There are many representations of the self, some accurate, some false. In this sense we might say they are "reflected." By understanding the self in some way, we have an image relating to self-itself, some which are distorted (e.g. "everything is me" "there is no self") and some which are not (e.g. "I am an entity distinct from everything else" ). Sometimes representation of the self is an image of this difference, other times a representation of self lacks that image entirely.

Punshhh:Can you answer how meaning in the self relates to meaning in the world

I'm inclined to say it never does but it always relates. The tricky thing about selves (distinct individual subjects) is they are defined in themselves and given with the rest of the world. Where do I come from? How is that the immanent comes to be expressed through me?

Well, we could say it's because of the various other states of the world with their particular immanent expressions. As I am, I am the product of many different other causal states with particular immanent expression (e.g. humans, mother, father, education, culture, etc., etc.), all of which were given to make me as I am.

Yet, it is also true that I was an inseparable part of making all those events. If I never existed as a baby, I could not have been born. If I didn't make the choices I did, might exist differently (i.e. with a different immanent expression) than I do today. Any of those casual relationships also relies on my presence, how I react to them in the moment, to define how I exist and my particular immanent expression at any time. Despite my existence (and so particular forms of immanent expression) being set by the states around me, the presence of those state alone cannot be said to give my particular immanent expression (a certain meaning).

In the sense in transcendent beliefs, the idea that one's meaning is created, enforced, constituted or grounded on a force outside the self, there can be no relation. One's meaning cannot be expressed without themselves. Beyond that, I'm not sure it makes much sense to speak of how does the meaning of self relate to the meaning of the world.

The question appears to pose the idea that meaning comes to us without ourselves. As if we could look out into the world, notice the presence of some meaning, and it would somehow define our meaning without ourselves being present. It seems more or less driven by the question: "How do I gain meaning?" or "What part of the world will give me meaning?" Almost treating the question of meaning as if it were an empirical inquiry-- "If only we can find the theory of meaning, then will be able to control the world so it has meaning."

But meaning is infinite. We (and the world) are never without it. Even in the deepest depths of despair, people and the world still mean something, they still matter. Suicide is not driven by meaningless ( "what happens doesn't matter" ) but by meaning ("life is too horrible to allow it to continue" ). In this sense, nothing gives meaning. It always is.

The relationships of the world and self to meaning aren't interesting for providing a way to obey meaning when we have none. Rather, they are interesting for attaining particular immanent expressions within the self. What to I need to stop feeling horrible, to stop despairing, to flourish, etc.,.etc.; it's about obtaining a contented and ethical self. Sometimes this is transcendent belief and it works well.

With respect to knowledge though, the transcendent belief tells a falsehood. It mistakes one's own success (flourishing, finding contentment, etc.,etc.) for their absence. To make itself inciting, it tells the falsehood it's the world has no meaning and needs it to become meaningful.

The result is people making arguments and thinking like Wayfarer. An understanding where nihilism reins (the world is, in-itself, meaningless) and the transcendent belief is a requirement to add meaning in the world. It simultaneously reads the everyman as discontent and then proclaims itself to be the only solution to their problem. In this respect, it functions as a self-serving generator of anxiety. The person who was content with their life, but has never really given much thought to spiritual or philosophical matters, is suddenly assaulted by the proclamation they are meaningless. A practice not concerned, in terms of understanding, with the individual's flourishing and contentment (that would be "heathen" focus on the self) but rather increasing and maintenance of that particular transcendent tradition.

My approach is considered "evil" for this reason. Not because I argue there ought not be belief in the transcendent or that it doesn't work, but rather because I make the transcendent unnecessary for meaning. Since I say meaning is infinite, so that the world cannot be without it, the transcendent has nothing to do. Such beliefs are merely one way people might be contented or flourish. They could do so in many other ways, just as well. A plurality that the transcendent traditions find abhorrent, even secluded mystical ones.

If one cannot say: "If my tradition was wiped out tomorrow, people in the world could still flourish and the world is meaningful. All that is lost is what I love, practice and consider valuable," then they are guilty of believing this transcendent illusion, that the meaning and of the world and everyone in it is dependent on the practice of their tradition. (and in this respect, it's not just religions and mystics which do this. We see plenty of it in wider philosophy, science, etc., etc., too).

TheWillowOfDarkness:My approach is considered "evil" for this reason. Not because I argue there ought not be belief in the transcendent or that it doesn't work, but rather because I make the transcendent unnecessary for meaning

The only real problem with you, is that a large proportion of what you write is meaningless, and that there's a lot of it. It would be advisable if you stop lecturing and start learning.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Thankyou for your considered reply, I am getting a handle on this now. The postmodern stuff is new to me, but I expected to come across it at some point, but I need to learn the vocabulary. I am still puzzling over your idea of an infinite meaning. Let's say we have a state in the world x it would have many different meanings for different subjects experiencing it. Are you saying that there could be potentially an infinite number and variation in the subjects experiencing it and therefore an infinity of possible meanings in X?

I say again, I think my transcendent is not much different to your immanent. My use of transcendent is probably unconventional. I really don't recognise the transcendent as something other, apart from a myth of popular interpretations of religion and spirituality. For me the transcendent is transcendent as other, but that other is us, it is the imminence in us, but is in some ways inaccessible, veiled from us. Hence is transcendent in that it is veiled in this way.