/lit/ - Literature

Immanuel Kant demonstrated that all thought (mentality) is restricted to the appearances. He believed that there is a "phenomenal" world which comprises the whole of conscious experience (in all its forms) and a "noumenal" world which involves things as they really are outside of thought.

While I admire Kant (and I think his point is close to the truth), I think he gets this wrong. He holds that the noumenal world is so outside of thought that it is impossible that any of our words or ideas even refer to it. How then could our word 'reality' or the idea of reality in any way refer to the noumenal world? If he takes the noumenal world to be the way things really are, but we cannot refer to the noumenal world, then our idea of reality is empty and fails to refer to anything.

I think this is closer to the truth. Reality is, in a sense, perception, but not in the way that trendy new-agers like to talk about it. Reality, the world, lies *within* perception, but it is restricted to only those ideas that become fixed in thought as the result of a long, communal, objective engagement with experience.

This view frightens me, however. I am reminded of the Lovecraftian idea that there are horrors beyond even the limits of human imagination. If the view I lay out is correct, and the Lovecraftian idea is also true, then we should expect to meet with the cosmic horrors as the result of our engagement with experience. I suppose this is why many religious traditions warn us about the felicitous use of scientific reason (think the CERN projects). While I'm not anti-science by any means, we should all take care not to open the pandora's box of experience. Engage with experience, for it will bear Reality, but respect it, for it will easily consume you.