Baby's are born with a priori knowledge. If born blank knowledge gathering can't even start.

Baby's are born with a priori knowledge. If born blank knowledge gathering can't even start. — Dijkgraf

Which is what I said.

Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant in this, is that in calling the noumenal "things in themselves" he contradicts his denial that they could be spatio-temporal entities, since there can be no "things" without difference and no difference without spatial and temporal separation. — Janus

That's actually a salient point. I'm listening to Kastrup's Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics on Audible, and this idea is central. Schopenhauer's conception of the will is that it is one unified whole within which 'things' only exist for perceiving subjects. On the other hand as noted above, maybe Kant is not saying there literally is a separate thing in itself that we don't see, but that because we don't see things as they are in themselves, we only see them as they appear to us - in other words, that we don't see them from no viewpoint, but from a perspective. I never quite understand why that is such a controversial idea.

On the other hand, it's clear our minds are not blank slates. — T Clark

That's where Kant faulted Locke and Hume. '“Every event must have a cause” cannot be proven by experience, but experience is impossible without it because it describes the way the mind must necessarily order its representations. We can understand Kant’s argument again by considering his predecessors. According to the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions, the mind is passive either because it finds itself possessing innate, well-formed ideas ready for analysis, or because it receives ideas of objects into a kind of empty theater, or blank slate. Kant’s crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only possible if the mind provides a systematic structuring of its representations. This structuring is below the level of, or logically prior to, the mental representations that the Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed. '

Kant’s crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only possible if the mind provides a systematic structuring of its representations. This structuring is below the level of, or logically prior to, the mental representations that the Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed. ' — Wayfarer

That makes sense to me. I need to spend more time with the science.

But why are you skeptical about that?

For a very useful primer have a read of The Continuing Relevance of Immanuel Kant, Emrys Westacott. — Wayfarer

Good little primer. Thanks again.

Following Kant, we obviously construct the phenomenal world we know out of the noumenal world in some way - presumably from the sensations which present themselves to our consciousness. — Tom Storm

No. Let me find the only quote that matters here ...

"The concept of noumenon is, therefore, only a limiting concept, and intended to keep claims of sensibility within proper bounds, and is therefore only of negative use. But it is not mere arbitrary fiction; rather, it is closely connected with the limitation of sensibility, though incapable of positing anything positive outside the sphere of sensibility."

- B311,312/A256

In short there is no noumenon other than the concept used in relation to phenomenon applicable ONLY in a negative sense.

"The concept of noumenon is, therefore, only a limiting concept, and intended to keep claims of sensibility within proper bounds, and is therefore only of negative use. But it is not mere arbitrary fiction; rather, it is closely connected with the limitation of sensibility, though incapable of positing anything positive outside the sphere of sensibility." — I like sushi

Thanks ILS but I am not really sure what that means.

In short there is no noumenon other than the concept used in relation to phenomenon applicable ONLY in a negative sense. — I like sushi

Can you try this again? I'm sure it's my fault. From the Oxford Reference:

On a different view, the distinction merely reflects Kant's understanding that all knowledge is knowledge from a standpoint, so the noumenal is the fraudulent idea of that which would be apprehended by a being with no point of view. It is unclear how on Kant's own view we can mean anything by the term

Is this the same thing?

We cannot talk of, or about, a 'thing' that we're at base level incapable of experiencing. It is not an it, it has no 'thinghood'.

Our world, our entire world, is phenomenon. Noumenon in a positive sense isn't anything we have any relation to and as we are here talking about 'noumenon' it is only in the negative sense as a marker for the limitation of our sensible experience (sensible in the terms of how Kant uses the term 'sensible' ... experienced).

If there was noumenon then we wouldn't be able to refer to it or articulate it in any form. Think about it a little. The thing-in-itself cannot be referred to on those terms in any way that makes any sense. It is only our habit of inferring that leads to the belief in some 'otherness' that is beyond our realms of comprehension ... but if some said item is beyond our realm of comprehension then our merely stating the possibility of some item is referring to some item and that is contrary to the said item being 'beyond comprehension'.

We can talk of a square circle and conjure up some image merely by stating it. Stating something gives it authority even though it is a construct based on experience.

I cannot do much better than that without writing a helluva lot more ... I don't want to right now, so hope that gives you food for thought at least.

I cannot do much better than that without writing a helluva lot more ... I don't want to right now, so hope that gives you food for thought at least. — I like sushi

Cool. That's more than enough. I'm not a detail guy. Appreciated.

In short there is no noumenon other than the concept used in relation to phenomenon applicable ONLY in a negative sense. — I like sushi

:100:

Good little primer. — Tom Storm

I thought so. I've returned to it many times.

"On a different view, the distinction merely reflects Kant's understanding that all knowledge is knowledge from a standpoint, so the noumenal is the fraudulent idea of that which would be apprehended by a being with no point of view." ~ Ency. Brittanica — Tom Storm

So, here's what is bothering me. I already quoted this:

The Greek word nooúmenon (plural nooúmena) is the neuter middle-passive present participle of νοεῖν noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word noûs, an Attic contracted form of νόος nóos[a] "perception, understanding, mind."[3][4] A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought".

Now in the Platonic sense, an intelligible object is something that is the object of rational judgement. In other words, it's a truth that can be arrived at by purely logical means or seen by reason alone. I'll give one of Feser's examples:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.

My bolds.

So that is the sense in which triangles are 'objects of thought' - a.k.a. noumena. So in the Platonist understanding, any actual triangle is an instance (or instantiation) of 'the (universal) idea of triangularity'. So in this case, the noumenal form, the object of thought, *is* the idea of the triangle (to use a trite example) - something grasped by reason alone.

But that is *not* what Kant means by 'the noumenal'. And I think this is why Schopenhauer says that Kant 'entirely overlooks the difference between the intuitive and the abstract.'

Gödel was a mathematical realist, a Platonist. He believed that what makes mathematics true is that it's descriptive—not of empirical reality, of course, but of an abstract reality. Mathematical intuition is something analogous to a kind of sense perception. — Rebecca Goldstein

Which is something that I don't think Kant seems to have seen, and I'm baffled as to why not.

Yes, I see the issue. This is a much deeper account of what I was initially wondering about and why I was hoping for more information on the proposed 'nature' of the noumenal. Do you suppose the transcendental aspect of Kant's model covers the gap?

At this moment, I don't know. More work required.

The Tao is called "non-being" and the multiplicity is called "being." It can't be conceptualized. It can't be spoken. Conceptualizing it is what turns the one into a multiplicity. — T Clark

I can see some parallels here. Noumena are non-being; it is itself a conception but cannot be conceptualized, which is to say there are no schema represented under it. For that reason, while noumena can be spoken, it is nevertheless, empty, content-less, hence cannot ever be a multiplicity.

Reflecting this on Kantian methodology, which makes explicit all humans reason exactly the same way, does not mean human reason is the only way to know the world, which at least makes room for the logical possibility of noumenal worlds. Understanding “...takes for granted....” the possibility of the logical form, but it is pure reason alone that prevents population of the form by its schema.

IknowIknowIknow.....hold the details, please (grin).

A minor exposition on the confusion of noumena with things-in-themselves:

“....The conception of a noumenon, that is, of a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a thing in itself (solely through the pure understanding) ....”
(CPR, B310)

This reduces to the stipulation that noumena are to cognized in the same way the ding an sich is to be cognized, not that noumena are things in themselves. Both are cognized through the understanding alone, but that does not make them the same thing. Conception of noumena by the understanding does not give things in themselves, and conception of things in themselves by the understanding does not give noumena.
———-

“....for things in themselves, which lie beyond its** province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that this cognition does not extend its application to all that the understanding thinks....”
**re: “sensible knowledge”
(Ibid, A255)

This reduces to the stipulation that the only reason to call things in themselves “noumena”, is to show both these conceptions abide by the same restrictions, but does not indicate they are the same thing.

Kant never meant noumena to be called.....understood as....things in themselves, even while interchanging object in itself with thing in itself. The text makes explicit the differences in them which should have prevented it. Things-in-themselves are empirical, laid out in the Transcendental Aesthetic, noumena are logical, laid out in the Transcendental Analytic. Every instance of the concept noumena referenced as a thing in itself, is in the context of pure logical thought itself, hence is never included in the Aesthetic.....because it isn’t an intuitive conception at all. One might even do so far as to say, you know....he certainly did differentiate the intuitive from the abstract, insofar as noumena are logically abstracted from phenomena, in keeping with his inherently dualistic paradigm.

Fast and loose with terminology? Yeah, maybe, but it’s not his fault if we mistake in the parts what he says as a whole.

Unless I got it all wrong, in which case, it’s entirely his fault.

But I'm happy to keep looking into it. Is there a specific reference in the Tao you can point to that resonates with any aspect of Kant, or are you talking more in terms of tone of the work itself? — Tom Storm

I was specifically talking about a comparison between the Tao and noumena.

I've been thinking I should reread some of Alan Watts stuff on Taoism, which is more prosaic, less poetic, than the Tao Te Ching. You're a pretty prosaic guy. I see that as a good thing here on the forum where flights of fancy are constantly taking off. Rather than provide you with any quotes from the TTC, if I find something in Watts, I'll pass it along.

But why are you skeptical about that? — Dijkgraf

I don't understand your question.

IknowIknowIknow.....hold the details, please (grin). — Mww

No. Don't worry about holding the details. I might not understand it, but being exposed is a good thing.

Ehhhh....there’s a bunch of exposure already. Doubt there’ll be much more without specific inquiry.

Gotta say, though. There’s been some pretty respectable responses so far.

The Tao is called "non-being" and the multiplicity is called "being." It can't be conceptualized. It can't be spoken. Conceptualizing it is what turns the one into a multiplicity.
— T Clark

I can see some parallels here. Noumena are non-being; it is itself a conception but cannot be conceptualized, which is to say there are no schema represented under it. For that reason, while noumena can be spoken, it is nevertheless, empty, content-less, hence cannot ever be a multiplicity.

Reflecting this on Kantian methodology, which makes explicit all humans reason exactly the same way, does not mean human reason is the only way to know the world, which at least makes room for the logical possibility of noumenal worlds. Understanding “...takes for granted....” the possibility of the logical form, but it is pure reason alone that prevents population of the form by its schema. — Mww

This makes sense to me. Kant’s pure reason demonstrates the limitation of human reason, beyond which is the capacity to differentiate between noumena and ‘ding an sich’. The TTC recognises that this limitation is evident in the structure of language and language use (a la Wittgenstein) - Kant’s attempt to speak about the noumena and Laozi’s attempt to speak about the Tao are employing a schema to effectively describe another schema.

The difference is that Kant is also bound by the pre-Darwinian Western notion that humanity is in a sense ‘super-natural’, so while Laozi strives to include humanity within both his schema and the Tao, Kant cannot but position humanity outside of the noumena, as an entity in relation to it, and to his schema. I think this is evident in a reliance on the ‘object’ in his third critique.

The difference is that Kant is also bound by the pre-Darwinian Western notion that humanity is in a sense ‘super-natural’, so while Laozi strives to include humanity within both his schema and the Tao, Kant cannot but position humanity outside of the noumena, as an entity in relation to it, and to his schema. I think this is evident in a reliance on the ‘object’ in his third critique. — Possibility

This seems to me to be a good description of the main difference between western and eastern philosophies. Eastern works from the inside and western from the outside.

We cannot talk of, or about, a 'thing' that we're at base level incapable of experiencing. It is not an it, it has no 'thinghood'.

Our world, our entire world, is phenomenon. Noumenon in a positive sense isn't anything we have any relation to and as we are here talking about 'noumenon' it is only in the negative sense as a marker for the limitation of our sensible experience (sensible in the terms of how Kant uses the term 'sensible' ... experienced).

If there was noumenon then we wouldn't be able to refer to it or articulate it in any form. Think about it a little. The thing-in-itself cannot be referred to on those terms in any way that makes any sense. It is only our habit of inferring that leads to the belief in some 'otherness' that is beyond our realms of comprehension ... but if some said item is beyond our realm of comprehension then our merely stating the possibility of some item is referring to some item and that is contrary to the said item being 'beyond comprehension'.

We can talk of a square circle and conjure up some image merely by stating it. Stating something gives it authority even though it is a construct based on experience. — I like sushi

I agree that we’re unable to consolidate anything positive about noumenon, but not that we’re incapable of experiencing the limitation ‘in itself’. Sensible human experience and understanding is not limited to language, but by language.

I think when we talk of a ‘square circle’ we’re not really conjuring up any particular image, if we’re honest, but experiencing our limitations with respect to understanding a relation between these two qualities. It’s like an event horizon, the difference between quantitative (relating to something as something other) and qualitative (inclusive relation). There is no way to distinguish a ‘square circle’ from one’s qualitative experience of limitations.

Naming something gives it potentiality in itself, whether quantitative or qualitative, stating the possibility of our understanding it, if not articulating that understanding as something apart from our experience. We are able to refer to ‘noumenon’ in potentiality, but unable to quantify it as something apart from our experience. For many of us, that’s a deal breaker.

That’s my current understanding, anyway.

We cannot talk of, or about, a 'thing' that we're at base level incapable of experiencing. It is not an it, it has no 'thinghood'.

Our world, our entire world, is phenomenon. Noumenon in a positive sense isn't anything we have any relation to and as we are here talking about 'noumenon' it is only in the negative sense as a marker for the limitation of our sensible experience (sensible in the terms of how Kant uses the term 'sensible' ... experienced).

If there was noumenon then we wouldn't be able to refer to it or articulate it in any form. Think about it a little. The thing-in-itself cannot be referred to on those terms in any way that makes any sense. It is only our habit of inferring that leads to the belief in some 'otherness' that is beyond our realms of comprehension ... but if some said item is beyond our realm of comprehension then our merely stating the possibility of some item is referring to some item and that is contrary to the said item being 'beyond comprehension'. — I like sushi

I missed this until Possibility referenced it. I like the way you've expressed it. I agree, noumena, as described by Kant, are not things at all.

I’m going through Bernardo Kastrup’s Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics. Overall, very good, but I’m not convinced by his interpretation of Kant on the Ideas. He says in the chapter on that subject, that the Platonic Ideas live on in Kant as the ding an sich. I just feel that is mistaken. The rest of the chapter - on what Kastrup makes of what Schopenhauer makes of Plato’s ideas - is, in my view, the weakest chapter in an overall good book.

Again there’s some deep issue involving Kant’s distinction between sensory and intellectual perception. In the Platonic/Aristotelian understanding, we know the intelligible forms with certainty - which is to know their essence. We 'get their idea' so to speak. That is developed on Aquinas, even - google 'the union of knower and known'. (There's more than an echo here of non-dual insight.) So the 'noumenal object' is not something unknowable - rather it is the idea or principle of the object as perceived by nous. The idea is the form of the particular, determining its identity. I can't see how that is represented in Kant, though. I'm hoping to glean the answer from the Pollok book I mentioned.

Obviously a very thorny question. Whether I'll ever really get to the bottom of it, I don't know. But mundane concerns are going to elbow that aside as I'm moving house this week, after 21 years, which is a logistical challenge somewhat comparable to Napolean's invasion of Russia, so for the sake of my dear other, I am going to log out for the week and concentrate on packing, lifting and shifting. (Don't hold me to it, I'm generally hopeless at keeping away.)

So the 'noumenal object' is not something unknowable - rather it is the idea or principle of the object as perceived by nous. The idea is the form of the particular, determining its identity. I can't see how that is represented in Kant, though. I'm hoping to glean the answer from the Pollok book I mentioned. — Wayfarer

Sounds promising. Well, if you're willing to do the research on this, great. This to me seems to be the gap we've been wondering about.

It'd be good to see some kind of diagram constructed out of this model.

Good luck with the move - watch you don't do in your back!

..though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.

Kant Bxxvi-xxvii.

reliance on the ‘object’ in his third critique. — Possibility

What ‘object’?

One of my favorite quotable passages. Seems pretty easy to decipher, but there’s more to it than the words, especially considering the footnote that accompanies it.

Baby's are born with a priori knowledge. If born blank knowledge gathering can't even start. — Dijkgraf

Bingo! There has to be some preinstalled software (MS DOS) to get the computer (brain/mind) started and ready for action! Bootstrapping!