What is the noumenal? The word noumenon means object of thought. It refers to that which can only be thought, never experienced. That which can be experienced is a phenomenon. I can experience 1, 2, 3, 4 objects. I can only think, but never experience, “the set of all natural numbers.” This is the basic ontology of the first critique. And I think we need to interpret all of Kant’s metaphors in its light. It means that when he discusses the a priori ground of reason, he is not suggesting that transcendental methods get us beyond the phenomenal. Indeed, I believe that transcendental idealism is nothing more than the doctrine that we can have synthetic a priori knowledge only of phenomena, not of noumena. To claim that Kant meant us to go beyond is to violate the basic ontological assumption: That the noumenon (take your pick…!) is permanently unverifiable. Is it discourteous to ask where people would go, those who want to go further?
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