Cognitive Closure (philosophy) - Phenomena and Noumena

Phenomena and Noumena

As argued in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, human thinking is unavoidably structured by Categories of the understanding:

Quantity – Unity, Plurality, Totality.
Quality – Reality, Negation, Limitation.
Relation – Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, Community.
Modality – Possibility or Impossibility, Existence or Non-Existence, Necessity or Contingence.

These are ideas to which there is no escape, thus they pose a limit to thinking. What can be known through the categories is called phenomena and what is outside the categories is called noumena, the unthinkable "things in themselves".

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