Posts tagged ‘phenomenal’

April 12th, 2012

Immanuel Kant’s Phenomenal-Noumenal Split

by Max Andrews

Kant’s reckoning with the true elements of knowledge ushered in a “Copernican Revolution”.  Kant focuses on his study of knowledge by distinguishing between the material and the form of sensation. The content of our sense knowledge comes from experience. The form, however, is not derived through the senses, but is imposed on the material by the mind in order to provide the material universal and necessary. The form is, therefore, a priori; it is independent of experience.  Kant called this content or stimulation input, intuitions as it comes from the senses. He also contended that there are innate categories of the mind which condition, mold and give form to these incoming sensual stimuli.  The mind possesses logically, but not chronologically categories such as sequence, size, causality, substance and modality. Time and space are considered pure intuitions which condition all knowledge gained through the senses.  The mind shapes the received information through these a priori categories.  These true elements of knowledge paved the way for Kant’s understanding of certain realms of knowledge; the phenomenal and noumenal realm.