Noumenal causality
pp. 175-183
in: Lewis White Beck (ed), Kant's theory of knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 1974Abstract
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant repeatedly characterized the thing in itself (Ding an sich or noumenon) in such terms as "the non-sensible cause" of representations or as "the purely intelligible cause" of appearances (A 494 = B 522). Again and again he employs the language of causal efficacy with regard to things in themselves. Thus he speaks of "the representations through which they [things in themselves] affect us' (A 190 = B 235) and elsewhere says that things in themselves are in principle unknowable: "they can never be known by us except as they affect us' (Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals, Ak. 452) because the thing itself is a "transcendental object, which is the cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance" (A 288 = B 344). The thing in itself is described as "the true correlate of sensibility which is not known, and cannot be known" through its representations (A 30 =B 45).
