What is a Noumenon?

Ask any (philosophy) person on the street, and you’ll no doubt hear how Kant divided the world into the
phenomenon and noumenon, and that we can’t know anything about the noumenon, but have to resign ourselves to dealing
with phenomenon, things in themselves vs appearances, etc etc.

? Ask any (philosophy) person on the street, and you’ll no doubt hear how Kant divided the world into
But even in this dismissive simplification an inconsistency has already emerged. How could have Kant divided the world into
the phenomenon and noumenon, and that we can’t know anything about the noumenon, but have to
two parts and then gone on, with a perfectly straight face, to deny that we could have any knowledge of the second part? Isn’t
resign ourselves to dealing with phenomenon, things in themselves vs appearances, etc etc.
the very division itself, and the agnostic claim about unknowability, presenting us with knowledge of what is unknowable?
That is, hasn’t Kant, at the outset, committed a self-referential contradiction that any philosophy undergrad could spot with a
blindfold on:But
“I even
knowinthat
thisthe noumenon
dismissive is unknowable”.
simplification an inconsistency has already emerged. How could have Kant
divided the world into two parts and then gone on, with a perfectly straight face, to deny that we could
have any knowledge of the second part? Isn’t the very division itself, and the agnostic claim about
The foolish thing would be to think that Kant has missed something so fundamental. So, we should, instead, suspect the
unknowability, presenting us with knowledge of what is unknowable? That is, hasn’t Kant, at the
simplified account. That turns us back to the original question, then, which is What is the Noumenon? It cannot be what Kant
outset, committed a self-referential contradiction that any philosophy undergrad could spot with a
divides the world into in a simple way, the way we would divide a genus into species. All we have at our disposal is the
blindfold on: “I know that the noumenon is unknowable”.
phenomenon, so for the noumenon as a concept to avoid a simplistic self-referential paradox, it needs to be explicated in the
terms of phenomenal reality. Obviously, owing to the definitional nature of the division, it is not a phenomenon, but the
agnostic claim,
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foolish thing woulditself,
beneed to emerge
to think that Kantfromhasphenomena. So, let’ssodofundamental.
missed something that. So, we should,
instead, suspect the simplified account. That turns us back to the original question, then, which is What
is the Noumenon? It cannot be what Kant divides the world into in a simple way, the way we would
Qualification
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a phenomenon,
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but the agnostic claim, and the division itself, need to emerge from phenomena.
speaking, but never when it counts, that is, whenever he is discussing the problem of the noumenon directly. So, let’s do that. He can’t.
Causality, as Schopenhauer points out, is a category only legitimately applicable to phenomenon by Kant’s own admission.
Furthermore, once Kant has placed time and space on the side of the phenomenon, it becomes unclear what we mean
by causalityQualification
when it is applied beyond the context of space and, especially, time. It makes no sense, then, to speak of a supra-
sensible causality
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He can’t. Causality, is asfar more complex, and
Schopenhauer
subtle points out, is a category only legitimately applicable to phenomenon by Kant’s own admission.
Furthermore, once Kant has placed time and space on the side of the phenomenon, it becomes unclear
what we mean by causality when it is applied beyond the context of space and, especially, time. It
makes no sense, then, to speak of a supra-sensible causality beyond any possible phenomenon. F

Groundwork
But first, let’s lay some groundwork. It’s important, as Kant seems so committed to the idea of the
noumenon despite its perilous potential inconsistency, that we set up the background of how
the Critique of Pure Reason births the idea alongside the machinery that forms the true focus of the
text.

It could be said that Kant becomes committed to the idea of a noumenon in the opening sentences of
the Critique of Pure Reason, when he’s first defining the faculties:

“The capacity (receptivity) to obtain representations through the way in which we are affected by
objects is called sensibility.” (B33|A19)
So, even in the opening sentences we have an “object” that we are affected by, and our capacity to be
affected is called sensibility. Intuition (the product of sensibility) is defined as that in our knowledge
that refers to these objects “immediately” (ibid). It would seem the “object” has already been separated
from our capacity to experience it. However, reading the inevitability of the noumenon into this
opening does a certain retroactive violence to Kant’s mode of expression. The intuition of the
sensibility refers immediately to objects of knowledge. Furthermore, though sensibility has been set up
as a passive faculty (thus raising the question, passive to what?), our way of being affected, this does
not, yet, entail an epistemic gulf between things in themselves and our being affected by them.

From there, the understanding is defined as the reserve of concepts that provide the form of our objects
of knowledge, allowing them to relate to one another. So, to offer a simple example, allowing us to
count disparate objects as belonging to a single quantity. There is nothing in my pure perception
(intuition) of the various objects in front of me to suggest that they could be numerically identical (each
being equal to one thing), however I can truly treat apples and oranges equivalently when I am
counting fruit. How many “things” is this laptop in front of me? One? Three? Seventeen? Depends on
the operation. The play of concepts allows me to see the laptop as a single unity one moment, and then
as a complex amalgam of hardware components in the next, and finally onto a dizzying digit
expressing the total number of atoms that make it up. My sensory experience of the object does not
change through these conceptual shifts, only what the object represents to the conceptual notion
of quantity. This conceptual notion of quantity is given ready-made in my perceptual experience, even
though there is nothing perceptual about it. It is the conceptual component, the contribution of the
understanding.

This is all to say that we can perform arithmetical operations easily on the objects in front of us because
we experience objects through the concept of an object in general. The concept of an object in general
is amenable to clean mathematical quantization, in a way the flux of multi-sensory perception isn’t.
That’s why I can add a phone to a piece of ash and a stone and a power cable. They all partake in the
concept of “object” generally, so I can perform arithmetic upon them as generic “objects”, despite them
not sharing any more commonality than their being “objects, generally”.

Now, in the classical Kantian maneuver, it’s argued that we couldn’t derive the concept of an object in
general from the particular objects appearing to us, because objects as they appear already presuppose
an understanding of objects in general. I.e, we couldn’t learn math by counting things we see, because
if we’re counting we’re already doing math, and if we were in a state where things appeared to us as
uncountable (countability being completely unknown) it’s hard to see how we could learn counting
from uncountable things. Thus, the concept of an object in general is given by the mind a priori and
our intuitions (perceptions) fall into these demarcations.

Anecdotally, I remember drawing something as a child, and having the epiphany that objects didn’t
actually have bold black outlines as they do in comic books. The fact that this was an epiphany points
to the fact that there is something truthful in the “black outline” view of visual experience, despite it
not being something in our visual experience. The concept of an object is this virtual outline, or what
makes it possible, more or less.

Kant then wonders how it is this concept of an object in general could have arisen in such a way that it
could apply to perception so ubiquitously. He represents it through the general formula “Object=X”.
Now, it’s not enough we have this notion of Object=X, we need to be able to say how it is possible for
the world as it is experienced to be so subject to it. In an awesome passage he derives the general
concept of an Object=X out of the Cartesian Cogito. It will be instructive to our discussion of the
noumenon to see how the proto-notion developed.

Object = X
Descartes puts forward “thinking” as a solid, absolutely certain given. To understand
this it is important to remember that Descartes considered perception itself as a mode
of thinking. In fact, Descartes definition of “thinking” in the 2nd Meditation
encompasses all of the phenomenological “given” — perceiving, calculating, willing,
feeling, refuting, reasoning and so on. All of these, taken in their pure aspects,
just are, self evidently. This is what he meant by his definition of “thinking”; all that
can be seen to self-presently just be. A moment’s reflection can show us why he needs
this tautological definition (of thinking is being, being is —> thinking is): if he
attempted to provide a determinate concept of thinking, which would define it more
concretely, this would fail the very skeptic operation he was performing (one can
always be wrong about/doubt the particular application of a determinate concept).

Anyway, Descartes jumps from this sureity of the present given to the sureity of the
self to which this given is given. However, he cannot personalize this self (that would
require predicating determinate concepts to it), only point to the given as given and
refer the self to this process of the given being given.

Kant builds on this and takes this “I” of the Cartesian Cogito, calling it the
“transcendental unity of apperception”. Basically, the content of my given experience
is constantly shifting and changing. As I move around my house a myriad of forms and
objects unfurl themselves, my thoughts move restlessly from this to that and my eyes
dart around. However, all of this transformation is occurring within a unified “frame”. I
can never directly find this frame itself but everywhere it is the same, hence
transcendental. The unity within it is what provides the possibility for there to be
unified particular objects in the first place. As in, when watching a film, we don’t see
individual disjointed photographs, but in each viewer these successive images, by
sharing a place, and moving regularly through an unfurling time, are unified. It’s that
experience itself is unified spatially, from one moment to the next, that allows the
content of a film to itself unify across successive times.

Now, consciousness itself might be disjointed and “gappy”, as Daniel Dennett has
argued, for example, but it is presented first and foremost as a unity. This
transcendental unity of apperception is the prototype for the concept of an object = X.
So, the first object is the Cogito as the mere unity of experience, a frame, labelled “I”,
and this is then the model of unity and objects in general. Within this general unity, all
objects are given within a unity that they are powerless to contradict. Your shoes might
not match your belt, but they are both being there together happily in this one
experience. Once we’ve got this universal condition of unity, then each object of our
experience takes part in this overarching, grand project of “unification”.
This unity, this object = X, with no determinate content (experience is always shifting),
provides the ground of the conceptual matrix that not only partitions our sensible
intuitions into stable objects, but allows them, via this matrix, to relate to each other in
our experience, thus giving rise to the possibility of knowledge as the description of
these conceptual relations within the matrix.

And, Noumenon?
We seem to be a far cry from the noumenon, but we’re only a single step away.

This object = X, the ground of objecthood in general, is what turns us to the noumenon
in the first place. The TL:DR of the entire Critique of Pure Reason is that the only
legitimate knowledge is that which takes place within this conceptual matrix at those
points occupied by possible intuitions. In other words, you can think whatever you
want, and follow through the logical implications of concepts as far as you wish, but if
you want to make a claim to knowledge (an assertoric claim), this conceptual structure
needs to be “fleshed” out with references to sensible intuition. I.e. “The math is sound,
but the experiment must be conducted”.

However, these sensible intuitions alone are not sufficient to our knowledge about
them: they are just a flux of impressions situated in the forms of space and time. There
is always a conceptual excess over pure perception in every object. Even in our
transcendental unity of apperception, there is an extra conceptual component added to
the whole universe of possible perceptions: their unity. The concept, in its bearing on
the perception, always has a +1.

This emboldens the understanding. For every object that it holds in view with its
concepts, the intuitions of sensibility only color-in a portion of it; the concept is always
a bit bigger than what is merely given in perception. So, there is necessarily a gap, or
remainder, with every application of a concept. The name of this gap, or remainder, is
“Noumenon”.

“Our understanding thus acquires a kind of negative extension, that is, it is

not limited by sensibility, but, on the contrary, it limits sensibility, by
calling things in themselves (not considered as appearances) noumena.”
(B312|A256) (emphasis added)

The notion is exciting to the understanding, because it can freely play with concepts — 
remember how my laptop can be as many objects as a I need it to be for the purposes
of thought? So, the understanding has the power to extract the gap and treat it as an
object unto itself…

Kant militates against this. The understanding treating the gap as an object would be
a positive notion of the noumenon: that is, as an actual object for non-sensible (i.e.
intellectual) intuition. However, sensible intuition is the only one we have, so when the
understanding takes this gap or remainder of conceptual content over what is given in
experience, and attempts to think it as a object in itself, it thinks nothing. Kant, instead,
warns that we can only think the noumenon in the negative sense, that is, as a gap, or
remainder, or limit. We can’t then take this gap as anything positive, but have to leave
it in this negative state — of merely being what escapes the positive presence of
sensible intuition by definition. He even assigns it its place in his schema of
“nothingness”. The noumenon is a conceptual form of nothingness, alongside its
partner, contradiction, and opposite its siblings, the intuitions of emptiness and
absence.

“the object of a concept to which no intuition can be found to correspond

= nothing; this is, it is a concept without an object, as are the noumena,
which cannot be counted among the possibilities, though they are not
therefore claimed to be impossible either (ens rationis)” (B347|A290).

This not-possible but not thereby impossible is the character of the problematic, which
is opposed to the apodictic (necessary), and the assertoric (permitting of being
true or false). The noumenon is firmly in the realm of the problematic, Kant is very
repetitive on this point, meaning he’s neither committed to the question of its necessity,
or even the question of its existence. It is quite literally nothing at all.

The Problem of Solipsism

So far seemingly so good. We’ve followed Kant’s arguments through, and disentangled
the self-referential paradox. It’s not the case that we can know that the noumenon is
unknowable, because the noumenon is nothing at all, by definition. It is beyond the
purview of possible thinghood, and is a conceptual illusion arising from the work of
the understanding in general. This is satisfying until we remember that what we are
talking about here is the real world! That is, the world beyond our experience of it.
We’ve fallen into the worst kind of skeptical solipsism, where we have shown the
notion of the “real world” beyond our individual sensual perception as illusory, and
haven’t replaced it with anything.

Fortunately, even though Kant asserts that the noumenon only has a negative,
problematic concept, within the sensibility it has a positive role. That is its role
of limiting the sensibility.

“With all this the concept of a noumenon, if taken only problematically,

remains not only admissible but, as a concept to limit the sphere of
sensibility, indispensable.” (B311|A256)

But why does the sensibility need to be limited. We’ve already discussed how the
understanding necessarily over-stretches sensible intuition, creating the gap called the
noumenon, but there is a difference between over-stretching (a passive, indifferent
relation) and limiting (an active relation).

We need to tread carefully here. The noumenon, as negative extension, can inhabit the
realm of the “problematic” quite happily, but if we talk of this negative extension
having positive effects, positive force, limiting the sensibility, we seem to be
hypostatizing it into an object that could be the cause of a limit, an assertoric
hypothesis. This compromises the safety of the problematic nature of the noumenon,
and draws it into the network of things which also compromises its purely negative
character.

Kant’s knife work around and through these issues is masterful, and worth quoting at
length:

“We do not say that thought is in itself a product of the senses and
therefore limited by them, but it does not follow that therefore thought,
without the aid of sensibility, has it own pure use, since it would then be
without an object. Nor would it be right to call the noumenon such an
object of the pure understanding, for the noumenon signifies
the problematic concept of an object for an intuition and an understanding
totally different from our own, of an object, therefore, that is itself a
problem. Hence the concept of the noumenon is not the concept of an
object, but only a problem, inseparable from the limitation of our
sensibility, as to whether there may not be objects entirely independent of
the intuition of this sensibility. This is a question that can only be answered
in an uncertain way, by saying that since sensible intuition does not
embrace all things without distinction, there remains a place open for other
and different objects, which therefore cannot be absolutely denied; but they
also cannot be asserted as objects of our understanding, because there is no
determinate concept for them (our categories are unfit for the purpose).”
(B343–344|A287–288) (emphasis added).

Sensible intuition itself has a limitation, it does not embrace all things without
distinction, and this limitation is inseparable from a problem, the concept of the
noumenon, that refers to the possibility of objects beyond the sensible intuition. It’s
important we get the directions right here: the problem that just is the concept of the
noumenon (the noumenon is a problematic) cannot cause a limitation in the sensibility,
the sensibility needs to find it in itself. However, the sensibility
cannot think, only sense, so this limitation in it has to be sensed (intuited). Once it is
discovered, it finds affinity with the gap or remainder of conceptual excess, this is
the conceptual expression of the problem inherent to intuition.

Erich Adickes (1924) points to this situation and claims that in direct experience there
is always a “breath of the transcendent”. That is, in our most direct experience, the
sensibility always-already intuits something beyond itself, which is then
conceptualized on the side of the understanding as the excessive topography of the
concept of an object in general. Graham Bird (2006) instead points to the problem as it
is phrased by Kant above, that the gap between the concept and the intuition always
raises the question for sensibility that those “unintuited” elements of the concept could
possibly be intuited by other possible cognitions. Bird sees Kant, with this entire
noumenon endeavor, as merely leaving the door open to the possibility of radically
different minds who may be able to intuit directly what we can only conceptually posit,
that is, intuitions that could fill the gap between the edges of the concept and the
intuitions that color them.

However, a synthesis of these two views is possible. What Adickes emphasizes is that
the sensibility has to, with no thought of its own, intuit a limit, or incompleteness, in
the pure given of sensation that turns it over to a beyond that it cannot intuit, only
conceptualize via the understanding. Bird emphasizes that the sensibility humbles itself
in admitting not being able to see it all, discovering a limit posed by the possibility of
radically different ways of intuiting, that might be able to flesh out the gaps in the work
of the understanding upon it.

The synthesis of these two views points us to the other. The beings we share our world
with.

Let’s take sculpture as an example. Sculpture is perhaps a singular art form in that it’s a
play of multiple spatial points of view occurring over time. I can unite the total piece of
art, into the unity that it is, only by walking around it and connecting each successive
perception into a series. However, such a unity is conceptual only — I can only have
the empirical intuition (an intuition composed of sensation) of a single slice at any
given time.

But, this is Florence, and that is David; there are many of us here as usual. Each of us,
slowly orbiting the sculpture, using our cameras to record the slices relative to our
position, intuit that we do not intuit what the other intuits. We know, conceptually, what
the other sees, (we were just standing where they are now), but in order for us to
combine the two sides of the sculpture into a single empirical intuition, the fabric of
space and time would need to be altered, curved. This is impossible because space and
time are the forms through which our intuition is given in the first place, not objects, or
properties thereof, amenable to alteration. In order to intuit the entire sculpture, we
would need to possess “an intuition and an understanding totally different from our
own” (B343|A287), one that is not structured around these particular forms of space
and time that our intuitions are structured around. With the two of us, standing on
opposite sides of the structure, we both intuit the possibility of a unity of
apperception beyond the horizon of this unity of apperception that is “I”.

Now, it’s not enough that I just see an other seeing the sculpture. I may happily believe
this other lacking in interiority: a zombie or robot. If that was the case, the sensibility
would encounter no limit, because the entire object that the robotic other is, through
and through, would be the possible object of intuition. A macabre dissection would
verify that inside of them are just more intuitions, nothing would escape the purview of
sensibility. It’s only when I regard the other as other (that is, as another unity of
apperception) that I acknowledge that beyond all possible perceptions I could have of
this object that they are (this body and its inner mechanisms), there are inaccessible
intuitions within this other, intuitions that my sensibility cannot gain access to,
intuitions that occupy currently empty spaces in the gap between my concept of the
object and this particular experience I am having of it right now. How does this arise as
a problem for my sensibility? When the other speaks.

Noumenal Elephants
Perhaps simplifying the problem will make this more clear. Fortunately there’s a ready-
made parable: the blind men and the elephant.

The story is something about a group of blind men groping a poor, silent elephant.
Because each of them is groping a different part, they come to radically different
conclusions about what it is they are groping. The one feeling the leg says it’s a tree,
whereas the one feeling the trunk says its a snake, for example.

Now let’s give this story it’s proper Kantian weight. Being blind, the men’s entire
faculty of sensible intuition (within the confines of the story) is limited to sensations of
touch in the palms of their hands. This conveniently limits the zone of “perspective”;
none of them can take in more than a literal handful of empirical intuition at a given
time.

It is also important to make a distinction here: it’s not just that the one feeling the leg
jumps to the wrong conclusion in believing he is touching a tree — the entire given of
his sensory experience is congruent with the experience of feeling a tree. Yes, he
is wrong in the conceptual sense, but what is more important is that while he is
experiencing something in the region of “tree-like” thing, which could include the leg
of an elephant as well as a tree, his partner is experiencing a “snake-like” thing. So, it’s
not just that they disagree on a conceptual level about what to call this thing in front of
them, what concept to subsume it under, but, rather, that they are having radically
different intuitive experiences relative to where they are standing in relation to
the thing. The one’s assertion that “it’s a snake” doesn’t just contradict the conceptual
distinctions of the other, but their very fundamental sensory experience of what is
happening before them. This is not “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?” but, rather, “Is it a glass
of lemonade? Or is it the original cast of Les Miserables?”

Now, it is an important element of the story that these blind men are reporting their
interpretations of the experience they are having — that’s the key that makes the story
turn. Had they been deaf and mute in addition to being blind, there would nothing
stopping one singular “unity of apperception” of one of them (say, the tree theory),
from reigning supreme across an enclosed, solipsistic universe. But, as it is, the
conflicting reports turn each of their individual intuitions into problems. The thinking
“how could he believe this is a snake?” turns the tree-like intuitions into
a problem. Suddenly, these intuitions that are perfectly congruent with a tree
 becomenon-all, they reach a limitation. What, in the deaf-mute-blind unity of
apperception was just unproblematically a tree, suddenly becomes, with the
impingement of another possible unity of apperception, an intuition limited by a
problem. And that problem? The problem of there being another cluster of intuitions
for this object of knowledge that are unintuitable by this sensibility in its formal
rendering of space-time.

We only need to, now, step out of our omnipotent perspective from which we can see
the blind man’s over-arching error, to assert that the elephant, the object, itself is
nothing but a problem that exists between these conflicting intuitions,
that arises through the encounter with an other via language.

So, tying all of this together, by way of conclusion, once we have others truly taken as others, intuition,
the presentation of the sensory world rolling out before us, reveals itself to be non-all. The other, with
their perspective and expressed view (language), poses a problem to it, instigating a limit. The name for
this problem is noumenon: the possibility of another sensibility, of another cluster of intuitions showing
that our own unity of apperception is merely partial. The partial nature of this unity is irrelevant to the
conceptual matrix of the understanding that understands the object nevertheless, despite not
being fully colored in by the intuitions of this particular sensibility (admitting of conceptual excess),
such that I can tell you about things you are experiencing over the phone. This gap between, on the one
hand, my intuitive experience, which, by the laws of space and time through which it is given,
necessarily contradicts your intuitive experience (we cannot occupy the same point in space-
time), and, on the other hand, the conceptual explication of the object that does not contradict
your conceptual experience, is the noumenon. I’m given a consecutively transforming bundle of
sensations, if I take you seriously as an other then I intuit that you are given another, but our concepts
match up, despite my intuiting the “left half” and you the “right”. This problematic of intuition gives
rise to the idea of the thing in itself, and the idea that if the forms of intuition were differently
constituted then I could intuit both what I and you intuit at the same time. The name of this problem is
“noumenon”, and it is not a possible fact (assertoric), nor a necessary form of my experience
(apodictic) but a pure problem. This “real world” beyond all possible perception is nothing but the
problem of mutually exclusive perspectives revealed by conversation.

It takes two to make a noumenon.