Noumenon
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The noumenon or thing in itself (German: Ding an sich) is a basic reality underlying observable phenomena.
Kant's usage
The word came into its modern usage through Immanuel Kant. The etymology of the word derives from the Greek nooúmenon (thought-of) and ultimately reflects nous (mind). Noumena is the plural form. Noumenon ("Ding an sich") is distinguished from phenomenon ("Erscheinung"), an observable event or physical manifestation, and the two words serve as interrelated technical terms in Kant's philosophy.
Explaining the relationship between the noumenal and the phenomenal forms is one of the most difficult problems for Kant's philosophy. On Kant's view, as expressed in his Critique of Pure Reason, reality is structured by "concepts of the understanding", or innate categories that the mind engages in order to make sense of raw unstructured experience. Since these categories include causality and number, it is problematic to say that many noumena exist or that they individually cause us to have perceptions of phenomena. But if the noumenal does not cause the phenomenal, then what is the relationship? The suggested answer is that the noumenal and phenomenal coexist simultaneously; we cannot say that either causes the other.
It can be said that for Kant, the noumenal realm is radically unknowable—for when we employ a concept of some type to describe or categorize noumena, we are in fact merely employing a way of describing or categorizing phenomena. Kant posited a number of methods by which human beings make sense out of the interrelationships among phenomena: the concepts of the transcendental aesthetic, as well as that of the transcendental analytic, transcendental logic and transcendental deduction. Taken together, they are Kant's description of the sum of human reasoning and use of language to describe the world in which we exist. In each instance the word "transcendental" refers to the process that the human mind uses to increasingly understand or grasp the form of, and order among, phenomena. Kant, here, is using a metaphor that is the opposite of "understand" ("to stand under"), saying instead that to "transcend" a direct observation or experience is to use reason and classifications (the forms of thought we engage in, including organizing and manipulating words and/or other symbolic representations) which strive to correlate with the phenomena we observe. By Kant's view, we can make sense out of phenomena in these various ways, but can never directly know the noumena, the "things-in-themselves," the actual objects and dynamics of the natural world. In other words, by Kant's Critique, our minds may attempt to correlate in useful ways, perhaps even closely accurate ways, with the structure and order of the universe, but cannot know these "things" directly. Rather, we must infer the extent to which thoughts correspond with things by our further observations of the manifestations of those things that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, and/or measured in some way by instrumentation, that is, of phenomena.
The relationship between noumenon and phenomenon is further complicated by the way in which our minds have been constructed. According to Kant, objects of which we are sensibly cognizant are merely representations of unknown somethings—what Kant refers to as the transcendental object—as interpreted through the a priori or categories of the understanding. These unknown somethings are manifested within the noumenon—although we can never know how or why as our perceptions of these unknown somethings are bound by the limitations of the categories of the understanding and we are therefore never able to apprehend the noumenon as it is actally manifest. It can be said that Kant is arguing that the categories of the understanding are required for our sensible apprehension of representations, and the noumenon is a prerequisite for the function of these categories. The direct link, however, between the noumenon and phenomena is assumed to be naturally existing by Kant, but he has much difficulty explaining exactly why or how they are naturally linked—that is to say, how it is that our minds are naturally capable of interpreting the world. In short, his methodology categorizes the various modes of understanding without demonstrating the processes of understanding and how they are correlated with each other.
Criticisms
Schopenhauer's critique
Schopenhauer claimed that Kant used the word incorrectly. He explained in "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy", which first appeared as an appendix to The World as Will and Representation:
"But it was just this difference between abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception, entirely overlooked by Kant, which the ancient philosophers denoted by noumena and phenomena. (See Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, Chapter 13, ' What is thought (noumena) is opposed to what appears or is perceived (phenomena).' ) This contrast and utter disproportion greatly occupied these philosophers in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of the Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later the scholastics in the dispute between nominalism and realism, whose seed, so late in developing, was already contained in the opposite mental tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant who, in an unwarrantable manner, entirely neglected the thing for the expression of which those words phenomena and noumena had already been taken, now takes possession of the words, as if they were still unclaimed, in order to denote by them his things-in-themselves and his phenomena." (vol. 1, Dover edition 1966, ISBN 0-486-21761-2 p. 476)
Nietzsche's critique
Nietzsche, having been profoundly influenced by Schopenhauer's work, went on to criticise Kant's noumenon on slightly different grounds; he later similarly criticised Schopenhauer's work: he found fault in the noumenon's lack of definite properties and its complete inability to interact with other things. Nietzsche argued that a thing in itself would necessarily be outside of any causal chain since it cannot interact with any other things without demonstrating other properties than being the "ground of being". He and later philosophers argued that the noumenon is of an utterly indeterminate nature and that any discussion that does not treat it as such thus cannot, in fact, be a discussion of the noumenon. In demonstrating any definite properties, the noumenon would cease to be so.
Nietzscheanistic criticism of the noumenon found, for example, in his Beyond Good and Evil, was arguably a precursor of the sort of scientific thought underlying later formulations of the scientific method in that both rely heavily on quantifiability, precise definition, and, above all, on falsifiability as a means of gaining knowledge, and in that both find fault with the noumenon's lack of quantifiability, observability, etc. While arguing against what he held to be the negative influence of the Kantian noumenon in the philosophy and science of his day, Nietzsche roughly approximated the scientific philosopher Karl Popper's assertion that falsifiability was the basis of scientific knowledge:
"Popper's account of the logical asymmetry between verification and falsification lies at the heart of his philosophy of science. It also inspired him to take falsifiability as his criterion of demarcation between what is and is not genuinely scientific: a theory should be considered scientific if and only if it is falsifiable,"[1]
while Nietzsche wrote in the eighteenth section of the first chapter of Beyond Good and Evil that
"It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds."[2]
Critique via Occam's razor
Occam's razor would eliminate the thing in itself from an explanation of any observable, quantifiable phenomenon whatsoever, since explanations of observable phenomena need not draw meaning from "descriptions" of inobservable ones.
Criticism via the scientific method
The scientific method similarly eliminates the thing in itself via attempting to construct an experiment to prove or disprove its existence. Since no aspect of an existent thing in itself could possibly be quantified, multiple observers couldn't ever be sure that they were looking at the same data "supporting" its existence, and thus no such experiment could possibly be replicated even if it could conceivably be formulated. Thus, experimental proof of the noumenon could not be demonstrated by anyone to anyone else, and there can never be any compelling evidence for its existence.
Influences on later philosophy
References to indeterminate things like the noumenon are widely scattered in philosophy. Discussions of "l'art pour l'art", for example, reflect a loop in the definition of art's purpose similar to the causal loop generated by a thing in itself. More importantly, qualia are things in themselves in that they are considered to be unquantifiable, indeterminate, indescribable, and, by their proponents, essential to consciousness (the "ground of being"). Any incommunicable feeling or any inexpressible thing would strongly relate to the idea of the noumenon in that all share this indeterminacy: discussions of "properties" of things in themselves are necessarily fruitless, since to bear any metaphorical fruit in such discussions the thing in itself would necessarily have to interact with observable phenomena. Any description of the noumenon, including Kant's, would be a property of it; it is always only descriptible in terms of observable phenomena. Quantifiability, or at least definition, are essential to productive philosophical and scientific discussion; in its complete indeterminacy, the thing in itself was in the opinion of many modern philosophers one of the greatest blunders in Western philosophical thought.
Etymology
"Noumenon" is the neuter form of the present passive participle of "noein", which in turn originates from "nous" (roughly, "mind"). Noumenon is linguistically unrelated to "numinous," a term coined by Rudolf Otto and based on the Latin numen (deity).
External links
- The Reality Construction Kit, in which constructing a new phenomenal reality aids recovery from mental illness.
