The Folly of Submissively Capitulating to, Over Deferentially Acknowledging, Noumena

The idea of the existence of reality independent of, and beyond our, limited human perception has been exhaustively expounded and debated in many different philosophical contexts. Different versions of the same basic premise have been variously called the noumenal world, Forms, dharma, and The Real among others. For purposes of this blog, I will, as per my general preference, use the Kantian terms of noumenal/phenomenal although I should be clear that I will not use the terms within the strict meaning of Kantian canon. While I am amenable to this idea, I am often troubled by how it contributes to erroneous conclusions amongst casual philosophers. It has also, over the years, reinforced in me the idea that in many matters, those who are oblivious are actually more likely to draw close-to-the-mark, albeit not accurate, conclusions than those who possess rudimentary or insufficient knowledge. Alas, that is an altogether different subject that deserves its own epistemological inquiry on some altogether different day.

My chief complaint about discussions regarding the impossibility of our familiarization with the noumenal world is that it is very likely to be misunderstood. In my experience, a sizeable number of, if not most, casual philosophers usually resort to overly skeptical and relativist conclusions by unequivocally asserting something to the effect that since humans are bound to never understand noumena (or truth), all knowledge is merely a matter of forming subjective ideas and beliefs based on one’s own personal predispositions. The problem, as I have come to know first-hand, with such mentality is that it constitutes an assault on truth because those who adhere to it, at least in its purest form, refute observable facts. This has the undesirable effect of undermining all claims to knowledge, something that philosophers have generally declared to be an impossible conclusion to accept in practice. For this reason, I tend to be partial to the view of logical positivists who assert that statements about matters of fact and logical relations between concepts are meaningful.

It is impossible to make verifiable claims about the world beyond one’s sensory perceptions (i.e., beyond one’s observations). In order to be verifiable, statements should be such that they are either based on worldly observations or can be logically inferred from factual statements regarding such observations. While the idea of the impossibility of our knowledge of the noumenal world (and therefore knowledge and truth) may initially appear as smacking of humility, one begins to realize its inherent arrogance once one considers that it is premised on claims to knowledge of a world that is unseen and unobservable. Moreover, this unbearably vague, perhaps even entirely speculative, theoretical edifice leaves the door ajar to each claimant to imagine a noumenal world all of their own which they can then use as a basis to formulate their own unique arguments to undermine verifiable claims to knowledge. To be clear, lest I am misunderstood, I believe that human sensory perception is imperfect and fallible and it is precisely this very ordinary condition that holographs the phenomenal, instead of the noumenal, world before us. Notwithstanding, imperfect perception by no means implies inevitable and inescapable failure in making worldly observations. Rather, it should be construed to mean no more than the idea that the limitations of our senses preclude us from experiencing the world exactly as it is. This, of course, connotes the sense that humans largely experience the world as it is whereas the skeptical view connotes the sense that we may be hopeless.

I do not believe that the noumenal world is somehow ontologically fantastic or that it exists in a dimension different than does the phenomenal world. My argument is that forming conclusions based on what one can observe and reasonably perceive is a wise course of action. For example, if we observe a bathtub full of water and we conclude that by dunking our head in it, our hair (provided, of course, that we are not bald) will become wet and this actually comes to pass upon the dunking of our head in the water, then it seems that excessively (dare I say, foolishly) deferring to the noumenal is unwise. On the other hand, if we observe a bathtub full of water and by dunking our head in it, our hair frequently catches fire instead of becoming wet then we should obviously take the noumenal/phenomenal distinction as seriously as those who beseech us to do so. Jettisoning observation-based knowledge in favor of the idea that we, as mere mortals, can never gain knowledge about reality to me suggests at least a mild form of self-induced or self-imposed psychosis.

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