I looked into the word 'noumenal' - it is derived from that seminal Greek word, nous, which I often remark, has fallen into disuse, and for which there is really no modern equivalent (outside specialised philosophy departments). So 'noumenal' means literally 'an object of nous', meaning, something that can be understood as a pure concept without reference to a physical instance. It's very close in meaning to the eidos of Platonism. However Kant seems to have overlooked that derivation, which is commented on by Schopenhauer: — Wayfarer

When Kant starts using "noumena" in the CPR, there is extensive footnotes. In the footnotes, he describes the noumena as intelligible objects. If we interpret "noumena" as external, and "intelligible objects" as ideas, then Kant is definitely an idealist, of the same sort as Berkeley. I think it is generally believed that Berkeley had influence on Kant

The split between internal representation and external reality that free energy models depend on amounts to a particular sort of idealism. — Joshs

I really can't see the link you're making here, could you flesh it out a little?

Humans are highly sociable — Wayfarer

:snicker: Good one!

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks.....

“....If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition, thus making abstraction of our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the word. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition, we in this case assume a peculiar mode of intuition, an intellectual intuition, to wit, which does not, however, belong to us, of the very possibility of which we have no notion—and this is a noumenon in the positive sense....

.....To be sure, understanding and reason are employed in the cognition of phenomena; but the question is, whether these can be applied when the object is not a phenomenon and in this sense we regard it as if it is cogitated as given to the understanding alone, and not to the senses. The question therefore is whether, over and above the empirical use of the understanding**, a transcendental use is possible***, which applies to the noumenon as an object. This question we have answered in the negative....”
(**....from which an intuitive cognition follows)
(***....from which an abstract cognition follows)

Nahhhh....Kant didn’t entirely overlook the difference, but rather, stated what it is. Arthur couldn’t abide with it, because he needed his notion of will to fill the unknowable void of the ding an sich, which he couldn’t do if there is a thing impossible for a human to know.
————-

But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.

“....When therefore we say, the senses represent objects as they appear, the understanding as they are, the latter statement must not be understood in a transcendental, but only in an empirical signification, that is, as they must be represented in the complete connection of phenomena, and not according to what they may be, apart from their relation to possible experience, consequently not as objects of the pure understanding. For this must ever remain unknown to us. Nay, it is also quite unknown to us whether any such transcendental or extraordinary cognition is possible under any circumstances, at least, whether it is possible by means of our categories....”

Kant never intended noumena to represent things-in-themselves, which are real external objects, but merely as objects understanding illegitimately thinks on its own accord. The only connect between them, is the fact they are both unknowable, the first because we only can know the representations of things as phenomena, the second because the categories have no application except to phenomena which objects thought by understanding alone can never be.

Arthur didn’t like that we cannot know a thing, that there is that which is impossible for human knowledge. All he did, was create a philosophy under which the incontestably knowable....the human will.... substitutes for Kant’s incontestably unknowable, the ding an sich, and PRESTO!!! That which is impossible to know disappears. (Sigh)

Still, it is all Kant’s fault, this metaphysical ambiguity, insofar as he stipulates both that the understanding is the faculty of thought, and, we can think anything we want. It follows that understanding can think anything it wants, including its own objects. But this is met with an immediate contradiction, in that the categories are necessary for the cognition of objects and cannot apply to anything not given by sensibility. Objects of understanding...noumena....are not given from sensibility, hence the categories cannot be applied to them, hence they cannot be cognizable as experiences. Whether or not there are any such things as noumena is not claimed as impossible, but nonetheless entirely irrelevant with respect to the human cognitive system as Kant proposes it.

Worth noting, and oft-overlooked, is the fact Kant authorizes the conception of noumena, but never....not once....ever gives an example of an object that represents that conception. (1).

Why, you ask.....and I know you did. Kantian duality writ large: because there is in the faculties of sensibility an unknowable, and because sensibility and logic are mutually inclusive, there must be that which is unknowable arising from the faculty of logic itself. Otherwise there resides an irreconcilable inconsistency in his speculative methodology. Hence, Schopenhaur’s attempt to eliminate both Kantian unknowables.

And now it is clear why Kant says we can think whatever we want.....provided only that we don’t contradict ourselves.
———-

To put a period on it, ending the nonsense regarding impossible empirical knowledge.....

“....The critique of the pure understanding, accordingly, does not permit us to create for ourselves a new field of objects beyond those which are presented to us as phenomena, and to stray into intelligible worlds; nay, it does not even allow us to endeavour to form so much as a conception of them (1). The specious error which leads to this—and which is a perfectly excusable one—lies in the fact that the employment of the understanding, contrary to its proper purpose and destination, is made transcendental, and objects, that is, possible intuitions, are made to regulate themselves according to conceptions, instead of the conceptions arranging themselves according to the intuitions, on which alone their own objective validity rests. Now the reason of this again is that apperception, and with it thought, antecedes all possible determinate arrangement of representations. Accordingly we think something in general and determine it on the one hand sensuously, but, on the other, distinguish the general and in abstracto represent objects from this particular mode of intuiting it. In this case there remains a mode of determining the object by mere thought, which is really but a logical form without content, which, however, seems to us to be a mode of the existence of the object in itself (noumenon), without regard to intuition which is limited to our senses....”

We experience the outer world directly rather than indirectly, like through some subjective Cartesian theater. We don’t experience “consciousness” or “subjective experience”; we experience independent things. If we pick up a rock, for example, there is nothing between us and the rock, and therefor nothing prohibiting us from confirming its independence. It seems to me the idealist has yet to prove what this prohibition is. — NOS4A2

One can’t know whether or not there is something between them and the rock. The only way to know that would be to take a view from nowhere, which is impossible as a view implies subjectivity. The mind could just be constructing an impression of a rock. Even assuming the existence of an objective material world, research had found that there is a lot of processing in the brain between raw sensory data and the world as we experience it. So either way, there is something between one’s experience and a possible objective material world.

We experience the outer world directly rather than indirectly, like through some subjective Cartesian theater. We don’t experience “consciousness” or “subjective experience”; we experience independent things. If we pick up a rock, for example, there is nothing between us and the rock, and therefor nothing prohibiting us from confirming its independence. It seems to me the idealist has yet to prove what this prohibition is. — NOS4A2

The prevalent understanding of consciousness is that it is either identical to or an emergent phenomenon of brain activity. We can perhaps accept that some external world object is in some sense responsible for the experience - and that among the many things in the causal chain it has some kind of primacy - but given that the external world object isn’t in my head, whereas the experience is, what does it even mean for the external world object be a (direct) object of the experience?

Moreover, the initial argument between direct and indirect realists was epistemological. Does experience provide us with information about the nature of the external world? Do external world objects have the red colour that I see things to have, or is a red colour a product of experience itself, a quality of mental phenomena only?

And if a red colour is a quality of mental phenomena, not a property of external world objects, and if the apples we see have a red colour, then the apples we see are mental phenomena, not external world objects.

The prevalent understanding of consciousness is that it is either identical to or an emergent phenomena of brain activity — Michael

Only for physicalists.

We experience the outer world directly rather than indirectly, like through some subjective Cartesian theater. We don’t experience “consciousness” or “subjective experience”; we experience independent things. If we pick up a rock, for example, there is nothing between us and the rock, and therefor nothing prohibiting us from confirming its independence. It seems to me the idealist has yet to prove what this prohibition is. — NOS4A2

Another thing: if I wear glasses then I quite literally have something between me and the rock. Am I seeing the rock directly or indirectly? Or what if I use a telescope to see something far away or a microscope to see something very small? Or what if I use a mirror to see something behind me? Or what if I use a TV screen and a feed from a camera in the next room?

Where's the line between direct and indirect? Even the naked eye is a middle-man between the external world object and the brain/mental experience, and even the air is a middle-man between the external world object and the ear.

Are you able to clarify what you just said? Then I will go back and try reading you again. It's unclear to me what your point is and the Kant is incomprehensible (to me). Sorry...

And if a red colour is a quality of mental phenomena, not a property of external world objects, and if the apples we see have a red colour, then the apples we see are mental phenomena, not external world objects. — Michael

Which is why it is better to use things like shape and volume for example. Here it's harder to dismiss the experienced as mere qualia. And, then, me and my dog can run through a field filled with holes and nettles and I notice despites our different nervous systems, we choose similar paths and rarely fall down (nor do I get pinced).Color seems to be the go to argument in these kinds of discussion, but that's out balance. And, yes, I realize I have not demonstrated direct sensing. And then on the other side if there was a stone in the middle of our brain, whatever sensing we used would not suddenly be direct. We still be interpreting, or? There'd still be a process with intermediary steps.

What does direct mean?

Philosophizing is tough! — Agent Smith

You were programmed you to think that, Smith.

Even the naked eye is a middle-man between the external world object and the brain/mental experience. — Michael

Pictures in the head. Where would philosophy be without them?

Your argument is that we encounter statements directly because it's nonsense to say it's indirect. — Tate


Yep. You got it. — Banno

If it's nonsense to say we encounter statements indirectly, then it's also nonsense to say we encounter them directly. We simply encounter them. The same goes for seeing anything; it makes no sense to say we see things directly or indirectly; that dichotomous pair of qualifications is misplaced; we just see things.

The same goes for seeing anything; it makes no sense to say we see things directly or indirectly; — Janus

Agree.

what your point is — Tom Storm

My point was I found specific references which tend to counterpoint the Schopenhaur quote. But then, I couldn’t find the quote, so context is missing, so...there is that.

Sorry, and no slight on your comprehension abilities, but it’s always best to go to the source, rather than ask somebody who has only his own understandings to go by. Even when questioned and references are included with the responses, best to check the references, so.....why not just start with them.

No worries, what you popped down seemed interesting and thought it might shed light on noumena. I tend to agree with Eugene Gendlin - "Philosophy is something that's very difficult to read. You have to read everything five or six times, sentence by sentence, like a crossword puzzle that you're solving." I don't have that kind of brain or patience, so if I have to read something twice I usually pass on it.

Worth noting, and oft-overlooked, is the fact Kant authorizes the conception of noumena, but never....not once....ever gives an example of an object that represents that conception. — Mww

Thanks, that is a helpful discussion from you. Bear with me here, I want to tease out a point which I only have a hazy grasp of myself.

There is in Greek philosophy a distinction made between phenomenon (what appears) and noumenon (what truly is). The noumenal object is, then, an object of the intellect (nous, noetic), in that it is something - a principle, or a deductive proof - which is understood by the intellect in a manner different to that of sensory knowledge. It comprises the grasping of a concept, not the discerning of a shape or some such (preserved in the saying 'to know with mathematical certainty'.)

This is what I think Schopenhauer was commenting on - he is accusing Kant of ignoring this classical distinction and instead appropriating the term 'noumenal' to serve a different purpose in his own philosophy, without respecting the sense in which 'noumenal' was used in Greek philosophy.

Now, there's a passage in one of Lloyd Gerson's essays which is relevant to this point.

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

Likewise a comment on Aquinas' theory of knowledge which makes the same point (derived from Aristotle):

if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

Now that is plainly a different matter from what Kant intends with reference to the unknowable thing in itself, although there often seems to be a certain equivocation. But the point about the Aristotelian-Platonist attitude is that complete knowledge is only possible for intelligible objects, because in knowing them, there is in some sense a unity with them, which is plainly impractical with the objects of sense, which are all separate by definition. Whereas the introduction of the ding an sich in Kant acts in a different role.

@Tom Storm - the point I got to in the post that dissappeared was the results that come back if you google the term union of knower and known. (Interesting that the first entry on the list is Islamic, also derived from Aristotle.)

Pictures in the head. Where would philosophy be without them? — bongo fury

Dreaming of pictures in the head? It is kind of odd how much vision is focused on in these kinds of discussions. There are other senses and types of experiences. I do wonder though, what is visualization if it's not "pictures in the head"?

we just see things. — Janus

Okay, but what is that we're seeing? The world as it is, the world as we see it, a simulated world?

@Banno @Marchesk @Janus @Wayfarer @Jackson @Tom Storm

When you analyze a visual illusion, you use a little deduction to figure out what the picture really looks like.

Deduction is part of sight,and probably all the senses to some extent. Do you agree?

I'd say we see things as they present themselves to us. If we stipulate that there must be things in themselves, i.e. things as they are when not being seen, than we can say that we see those things, but obviously (by definition) not as they are in themselves.

It is kind of odd how much vision is focused on in these kinds of discussions. There are other senses and types of experiences. — Marchesk

I don't think it's so odd when you consider that seeing presents us with determinate objects, that can be turned over, examined. moved around and viewed form a multitude of positions and so on. Remember the old adage: "Seeing is believing"?

I think I'd call it more examination and pattern recognition than analysis and deduction.

Remember the old adage: "Seeing is believing"? — Janus

Magicians make careers out of that saying.

I'd say we see things as they present themselves to us — Janus

Fair enough, but it's not just the things presenting themselves to us, since we're doing a decent chunk of the presenting.

Fair enough, but it's not just the things presenting themselves to us, since we're doing a decent chunk of the presenting. — Marchesk

Right, it's a body/world collaboration, which we, in our usual dualistic manner, conceive of as an artificial separation between the two.

That's a cool mat for the cat to be on!

When you analyze a visual illusion, you use a little deduction to figure out what the picture really looks like.

Deduction is part of sight,and probably all the senses to some extent. Do you agree? — Tate

There's a need for nuance.

There's a difference between seeing an illusion and analysing it. The analysis is not part of the seeing, happening after the seeing - we analysis what we see.

There's a difference between seeing an illusion and analysing it. The analysis is not part of the seeing, happening after the seeing - we analysis what we see. — Banno

Deduction is part of determining what's really there.

:yum:

Right, it's a body/world collaboration, which we, in our usual dualistic manner, conceive of as an artificial separation between the two. — Janus

Isn't the body/world collaboration a dualism? If we're asking whether there's an external material world, then we have to go beyond just the world as presented to ourselves and ask about the world itself. The world that's presumably much larger and older than we are.

And also a quote from a current source, namely, the technologist-turned-philosopher Federico Faggin, in whose book Silicon we find an account of an 'awakening experience':

The entire experience lasted perhaps one minute, and it changed me forever. My relationship with the world had always been as a separate observer perceiving the universe as outside myself and disconnected from me. What made this event astonishing was its impossible perspective because I was both the experiencer and the experience. I was simultaneously the observer of the world and the world. I was the world observing itself! I was concurrently knowing that the world is made of a substance that feels like love, and that I am that substance! — Federico Faggin