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

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.

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. — John

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.

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 — jkop

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

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? — Punshhh

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'.)

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).

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.

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

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.

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

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

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? — Punshhh

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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?

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? — Punshhh

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.

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? — Punshhh

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.

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.

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

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.

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. — John

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.

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

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

???

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.

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

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 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. — Brainglitch

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?

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. — John

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

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

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.