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In philosophy, a noumenon (/ ˈ n uː m ə n ɒ n /, / ˈ n aʊ-/; from Ancient Greek: νοούμενoν; pl.: noumena) is knowledge [1] posited as an object that exists independently of human sense. [2] The term noumenon is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to any object of the senses.
The combustion of a match is an observable occurrence, or event, and therefore a phenomenon. A phenomenon (pl.: phenomena), sometimes spelled phaenomenon, is an observable event. [1] The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which cannot be directly observed.
The distinction between "observable" and "unobservable" is similar to Immanuel Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena.Noumena are the things-in-themselves, i.e., raw things in their necessarily unknowable state, [3] before they pass through the formalizing apparatus of the senses and the mind in order to become perceived objects, which he refers to as "phenomena".
While Kant insisted that knowledge is limited to phenomena, he never denied or excluded the existence of objects which were not knowable by way of experience, the things-in-themselves or noumena, though his proof of noumena had many problems and is one of the most controversial aspects of his Critiques.
In Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913), Husserl continued and built on the (ancient to modern Greek [2] to early modern German Idealism philosophies') terms "noema" and "noesis" to designate correlated elements of the structure of any intentional act—for example, an act of perceiving, or judging, or remembering:
In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation. The concept of the thing-in-itself was introduced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and over the following centuries was met with controversy among later philosophers. [1]
Though it was formally developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), phenomenology can be understood as an outgrowth of the influential ideas of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). ). Attempting to resolve some of the key intellectual debates of his era, Kant argued that Noumena (fundamentally unknowable things-in-themselves) must be distinguished from Phenomena (the world as it appears to the mind
On Allison's reading, Kant's view is better characterized as a two-aspect theory, where noumena and phenomena refer to complementary ways of considering an object. It is the dialectic character of knowing, rather than epistemological insufficiency, that Kant wanted most to assert.