Is it impossible to know the noumenon?

[immortal]

Is it impossible to know the noumenon? I don't think so. Kant's distinction between two forms or terms 'Phenomenon' - the world as it appears through the sense organs and 'Noumenon' - the world which is unknowable and helps the mind in producing the phenomenon according to Kantian terms is quite familiar to all of us. Kant argued that all our known knowledge had to arrive to the mind transformed through the sense organs. So the only knowledge we have is of the phenomenon. The things which appear around us or in the physical world are not the things that exist in the actual physical world (i.e. the noumenon world) they exist only in our minds and has to the exact nature of the actual physical world we will never know it according to Kant.

 

I argue that there is a new kind of observation possible in humans which helps us to interact with the noumenon world directly. In this new kind of observation the knowledge does not arrive through the sense organs to the mind. Here observation is possible with out using the sense organs. The mind will be in a new state apart from the sleeping, waking and being aware. To understand this you have to understand our model of the mind. In our model brain ! = (not equal) to mind. To us brain and mind are two different things.

 

Mind is normally modeled has a tightly held rope with one end tied to the sense organs and the other end tied to the platonic forms. It is completely wrong to model the noumenon in this way because the only way to investigate is through experience and these experiences are not the kind of things that we normally see in the phenomenon world and the language we use to describe our experiences can be misleading, as it is understandable that our language was developed for the world of phenomenon. But it is inevitable we have to do this in order to make others understand what we are speaking.

 

When the mind unconnects itself with the ties it has made with the sense organs we have a mind which is like a fallen rope with the other end connected to the platonic forms it is in this situation we are able to interact with the noumenon world. Now how do we know it is really the noumenon world that we are seeing?

 

It is not a hallucination as the subjects who experience are quite normal and healthy and are not subjected to alcohol or any other kind of drugs and these noumenal experiences are not the kind of normal experiences that we normally see in the phenomenon world. One more important thing is that the experience always seem to occur only when the subject is in the process or perfroming the method to interact with the noumenon world and not at other times and hence this is not hallucination.

 

It is not an optical illusion. These experiences are not kind of things that appears when you switch on or switch off inputs to your sense organs and more importantly we should note that we are observing with out using the sense organs. These experiences are really rare and it is not the kind of thing that appears when you give inputs to your sense organs and the brain interprets it differently.

 

It is not an experience that is produced by stimulating some part of the brain. If it is then I will provide a test. The subject who has experienced the noumenon world has to be under stimulation if you are able to produce the same kind of pictures that the subject has already experienced then my argument will be wrong. But I bet you can't. However we can produce consistent observations i.e all subjects will see identical descriptions or experiences of the noumenon world.

 

It is not an experience created by the mind. If we assume that all the experiences that we experience are created by the mind then from where did the mind came from there has to be a basis for the mind and the noumenon world is the basis. This is established by the fact that the subjects have experienced or seen the structure of the mind as it is. Which I discussed before by giving a model.

 

To those who are wondering that how it was possible for me to look this issue from all angles was because this argument was under disscusion in the chat room. I posted here so that many people look at it and as all people will not be available at the same time.

 

Whether is this science is a different issue. One thing which troubles me from being to describe this as science is that we can not make predictions as to when the experience will happen. There is no math here and that may be the single reason others might not give importance to this but this is definitely not metaphysics.

 

I am neither going to argue this using scientific models nor i will try to reduce this to exact science. The models of noumenon world are very much differnt from the models of science and it is not surprising to see this because one talks about phenomenon and other about noumenon

It just provides us with a possible new Worldview and I think just scientific models are not sufficient to describe the universe completely we need these noumenon models but there are no one to one correspondance between the phenomenon and the noumenon models. Its completely different and if this is the new physics that Roger Penrose is looking for then everyone have to be prepared for big surprises.

Edited November 6, 2010 by immortal