Live4Metal said:
Just in case someone here takes a philosophy class on Hume, Kant, or Schopenhauer and gets confused because of what WD says:
What is Noumenon about?
"To define it completely, its the opposite of phenomenon. A phenomenon is something that cannot be physically explained. Thats why its a phenomenon. A noumenon is something that can be physically explained. There you get the idea of how we wrote the song. We can explain it. [Laughs]."
He got the first part, noumenon is the opposite of phenomenon. Everything else is wrong. A noumenon is "the intellectual conception of a thing as it is in itself, not as it is known through perception" or "a posited object or event as it appears in itself independent of perception by the senses."
A phenomenon is "a fact or event of scientific interest susceptible of scientific description and explanation" or "any state or process known through the senses rather than by intuition or reasoning." Phenomena can be explained, they're everything in the everyday world, in fact, the world is a phenomenon. Phenomenon is the computer in front of you, your body, the cum stains on your pants, the food you eat, the air you breathe, the sun, the earth, etc. Phenomena is everything you can perceive with your senses.
A noumenon, on the other hand, is something that is posited, but not explainable. Noumena include: god, freedom, the will, causality, etc. They are things in themselves, we can't perceive them, and thus, can never prove anything about them. They can only be assumed. We can only assume that we have free will, or that there is a god.
http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/modern/litrev/Kant-appearances.html
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/phenom/old/phennou.html
http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/phi151/OCT5LEC.HTM