Is our interpretation of the Universe noumenal or phenomenal?

Siri Perera
5 min readJan 1, 2022

First, what is noumenal — “In the philosophy of Kant, an object as it is in itself independent of the mind, as opposed to a phenomenon. Also called thing-in-itself.

Phenomenal — “perceptible by the senses or through immediate experience:

“the phenomenal world”

So here you already see that from the single mind what we perceive of the universe is via the interpretation of our 5 senses and also via the processing and the interpretation of brain processing we create an equivalent of the universe in our minds and it is different from the “thing-in-itself”. This is not saying that what we see of the universe in its tangible form is a lie in us but rather an extraordinary phenomenon that we can also see the “thing-in-itself” in its manifested form just from the interpretation of our 5 senses. From the darkness and the invisible made visible. Only 5% of the universe is mass and what we see of the universe and of our environment is all in the form of energy, yet we can see them all because of the interpretation via the use of light and our 5 senses. It is the thing-in-itself in its tangible form.

Having said this, we see that there are 2 types of manifestations via our mind that we can see. One is nature itself which is part of the natural laws and the natural world of the universe and the other is the synthetic world we created for ourselves with our thinking minds — the synthetic landscape of our living space and the cityscape. The tree outside your window always was and is part of nature, and was not created by your mind but your living space is a creation of the thinking process. We live in these 2 parallel systems existing beside each other.

So now we come to the many worlds and the many minds interpretation of what we observe.

You can see it is starting to get complicated and at the quantum levels there are many possibilities of outcomes and depending on where you are observing, there are multiple outcomes to existence of the universe and they suggest that they all exist and possibly in other universes.

But the outcome of the many-worlds interpretation really is dependent on the individual mind and from where it is observing. Hence the worlds branching off is dependent on the observer.

“The many-minds interpretation of quantum theory is many-worlds with the distinction between worlds constructed at the level of the individual observer. Rather than the worlds that branch, it is the observer’s mind

So what are we saying here, each of us is creating many universes from our own subjective minds. Each universe different from the other and they all exists. This seems like an impossible thing to suggest even on a common-sense level it does not seem plausible. It is just an idea in the mind and not a real thing. It is of the lower thinking mind just spinning an idea in the mind and in this sense it is just part of the phenomenon that is mind.

So, “Is the many-minds interpretation noumenal or phenomenal?”. So I see why you ask the question.

The mind is phenomenal as a thing in itself:

It is this: a phenomenon off the brain,

In whatever we observe of the universe will always be just a phenomenon of the mind and not as a “thing-in-itself” because it is observed via the 5 senses and it is also created from the subjective thinking in the lower mind. Perception in mind is only an equivalent of what the universe might be like if looking from just the raw data of the 5 senses without the subjective processing and the spinning of an idea in mind, but just via conscious non-judgemental observation of what we see. But as I have said earlier, the perception of non-judgmental perception, and not the idea in mind, is a real manifestation or a good equivalent of the structure of the universe. It might be a phenomenon in mind BUT it is a good equivalent of the thing-in-itself.

And the many-minds interpretation can’t all have an observation of their own and all be true. But quantum entanglement in minds can correlate information be make sure that there is coherence in what we decide is the “noumenal” perception of the universe and it is the universe itself that makes sure this correlation happens in us naturally.

Quantum entanglement on minds in the universe.

Besides, we all share a common baseline in our minds, so we could not go wrong from what we agree to what is the universe as a “thing-in-itself” even though we observe the universe via a phenomenon that is the mind, working off the brain.

We all share this road map of the thinking mind:

So I think we can safely say with the mind being what it is as a phenomenon working off the brain, that any interpretation of the universe, is still noumenal in nature and true to its thing-in-itself as all the mind has done is manifested the universe in our mind in the way it interpreted the energy profiles in the universe using light via our 5 senses. Perception is just showing us what it is in a different form in mind. As long as we know this we will be safe as we navigate the universe and be careful as to how we treat the natural side of the planet as we build our ideas in mind around it.

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