seeds wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:09 pm _______
There are participants in this thread who clearly do not have a clue as to what the Kantian term “noumenon” means with respect to its relationship with the term “phenomenon.”
Furthermore, anyone who thinks that we do not use our subjectively-based senses to access our memories (and similarly, our dreams) is simply demonstrating the veracity of the Dunning-Kruger effect...
...(and will no doubt continue to do so as they doggedly double down on their misinformed assertions ).
That being said (and in a backdoor defense of their ignorance), an un-recalled (unobserved) memory can indeed be thought of as existing in its noumenal state of being.
However, once a memory (of a first kiss, for example) is being inwardly observed, or felt, or heard, or smelt, or tasted by the agent to which the memory belongs, it is thus promoted into its “phenomenal” state of being.
In other words, depending on the circumstances, memories (and dreams) appear to be comprised of an essence that, in one moment, can present itself as a phenomenon,...
...while in the next moment, reverts into a noumenal state of being of which we have absolutely no way of knowing the true nature of.
_______
You do realize that I was supporting your assertions against Skepdick’s nonsense, right?
Nevertheless, in response to your question, of course Kant never expressed the phenomena/noumena dichotomy in quite the way offered by me.
However (IMO), the parallel in meaning seems obvious, in that we can never know the true status (i.e., as it really is) of an unobserved object in our mind, or that of an unobserved object in the universe.
Please read the following definition of Kant’s “thing-in-itself” from Wictionary:
And then this from the Collins English Dictionary:Wictionary wrote: thing-in-itself
Noun.
thing-in-itself (plural things-in-themselves)
(from Kantian philosophy on) A thing as it is independent of any conceptualization or perception by the human mind, postulated by practical reason but existing in a condition which is in principle unknowable and unexperienceable.
Synonym: noumenon
Antonym: phenomenon
With the above definitions in mind, one example I like to use for visualizing the meaning of the term “noumenon” can be seen in the Double Slit Experiment.Collins Dictionary wrote: thing-in-itself
noun
(in the philosophy of Kant) an element of the noumenal rather than the phenomenal world, of which the senses give no knowledge but whose bare existence can be inferred from the nature of experience
When a series of single electrons are shot through the double slits, what transpires in the space between the double-slitted wall and that of the detection screen is the perfect example of something that is “postulated by practical reason”...
(in other words, postulated as something that had spread-out into a wave by reason of the phenomenally observable interference pattern on the screen)
...but, at the time of transit, existed in a condition which is in principle unknowable and (especially) unexperienceable with our senses.
And the point is that it is literally impossible for us to directly know, or to directly experience (again, with our five senses) the true status of the electrons - (as they really are) - as they travel from wall-to-screen.
Even though we know (by “practical reasoning”) that something about the electrons is waving, we can only “infer” what is really taking place.
Now granted, I may be taking a bit of license with Kantian terminology, however, to me, the above analogy seems like a fairly simple way of helping us to visualize the meaning of the word “noumenon.”
_______