The Phenomenon and The Noumenon... (Sunday Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Sunday, February 01, 2009, 13:43 (1568 days ago) @ PeterR

For those not familiar, particularly with the term "noumenon", let me try and give a layman's explanation. This duality is pretty important to understanding what Clive Hamilton is getting at...

Take something solid. I have chosen an image of one of the 21 copies of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture "The Thinker" that exist around the world as the example. It was cast from bronze in 1881 (or thereabouts — I'm not sure if all 21 copies were cast in that year) and this one is of the copy that can be seen in the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.

We all tend to look at things in different ways. This happens to be a famous work of art that is attractive to many people. For many it "moves them". That's why it is famous. It is possible to imagine though it might be a big turn-off to other people — they find it ugly, or they are offended by the man's nakedness, or they have something against "thinkers", whatever... Looked at purely as a piece of art this work can generate a range of different feelings or responses in the people viewing it.

But it can also be looked at from other perspectives besides simply being "a piece of art". A metallurgist, for example, visiting the gallery — or simply viewing the image on a screen like this — might primarly be viewing it in terms of the chemical or physical structure of the alloy that was created to mould it. Questions might be buzzing through their mind not so much do with the artistic merit of the work but in terms of what alloy was used to achieve the end colour, or texture for the work. All those thoughts might be totally foreign to a person who knows nothing of metallurgy. A physicist can view this, seemingly solid piece of bronze, and their thinking might be taken down to an even deeper level at the structure of the molecules, atoms or even sub-atomic structure that gives this bronze its form. The "reality" at the subatomic level is that this seemingly timeless and solid piece of bronze is a veritable furnace of energy — and mainly empty space. It might seem solid to us living in the macro world of everyday perception but the reality at the micro- and nano-scopic level is that the structure might be likened to our solar system with vast distances of empty space between the protons, neutrons and electrons that seem to give it its solidity to us. And they're all moving around at the speed of friggin' light. Understanding Einstein's relationship between mass and energy they might perceive it not as some "massive structure" at all but in terms of the "cauldron of energy" that gives it the form we see as "timeless and unchanging" in our ordinary, everyday world of the macro dimensions.

How we all see things — even the same thing — is very much conditioned by a complexity of factors from our own experience of life. What we "see" with our eyes is a "phenomenon". What I am seeing might be — in fact more than probably is — is different to what you are seeing. The same could be said of the "phenomenon" of listening to music. When my wife listens to music (she's a musician and composer) I am bloody sure she hears a heck of a lot of things that simply do not even impinge on my consciousness. As one trained as a physicist and an acoustic engineer way back though I'm sure I also hear things when listening to music that are not of the slightest interest to her — such as I might be asking myself "I wonder what sort of microphone was used or how did the method of storing that sound digitally or on tape change it from the 'pure' sound I might have heard in the studio or concert hall?"

Our understanding of literally everything in life resides in the realm of the phenomenon. It is "conditioned" by our knowledge, by our experiences in life, by our emotional likes and dislikes. We cannot avoid it.

If, for a moment, we can imagine Rodin's sculpture sitting in the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia with no one viewing the item — this bronze statue — must have a substance, a form and meaning that is NOT conditioned by all these myriad subjective views that we lay on top of that "base essence" of what the thing is when we are viewing it. That "base essence" if you like is the "noumenon". It might be likened to the "absolute truth" of something, anything. It is "the thing" when viewed unconditionally — without all the "phenomenal conditions" we place on it because of our personalities, experience of life and likes and dislikes.

As Clive Hamilton, and the philosophers he bases his work on, argue it is impossible, or next-to-impossible, to actually view anything in its "noumenal form". Just by looking at something, or even thinking about something, we change it — we add another layer of meaning to it.

The problem that comes about is this: how can we have "moral absolutes" when everything we do, or even look at, or think about, is always conditioned by our personalities, experience of life and likes and dislikes? That's the essence of the problem his book is seeking to explore. If most in society, or an increasing number, are no longer persuaded that God hands down a law that we should not kill, or do a lot of other things, from where can a society find the "common baseline" or "the absolute" from which all can agree such and such a behaviour is ethical, or moral, and such and such another behaviour is unethical, or immoral? The same applies if there are a growing myriad of religious beliefs in society as to what God's views might be.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]