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".
Read more about this topic: Cognitive Closure (philosophy)
Famous quotes containing the word phenomena:
“What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer—war, and the preparations for new war.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)