BK Noumenal. Phenomenal

 Great — you’re asking about Bernardo Kastrup’s use of “noumenal” vs. “phenomenal”. This is central to his Analytic Idealism framework. Let’s lay it out clearly:

🔹 Kantian Roots

• Phenomenal (from Kant) = the world as it appears to us through perception, categories of the mind, space, and time.
• Noumenal = the world as it is in itself, independent of our perception.

Kant argued we can never know the noumenon directly — only phenomena.

🔹 Kastrup’s Twist

Kastrup keeps the phenomenal/noumenal distinction, but reframes it under Idealism (everything is ultimately mental):

• Phenomenal (appearances)
  
• What consciousness presents in experience: sensations, thoughts, perceptions.
• Our inner experience (what it is like to be us) is phenomenal.
• The external world we perceive is also phenomenal — appearances in mind.
• 
  
• Noumenal (the thing-in-itself)
  
• For Kastrup, the noumenal is not a material substrate (as materialists think).
• Instead, the noumenal is consciousness itself (the one universal Mind).
• Individual minds are dissociated alters of this broader noumenal consciousness.
• 
  

🔹 Example

• When you see a tree:
  
• The phenomenal = the experience of green, texture, the concept “tree.”
• The noumenal = the underlying consciousness-in-itself expressing itself through the pattern we call “tree.”
• 
  

🔹 Where Kastrup Differentiates

• Materialism: Phenomenal = mind, Noumenal = matter.
• Kant: Phenomenal = appearances, Noumenal = unknowable.
• Kastrup (Idealism): Phenomenal = appearances within consciousness, Noumenal = consciousness itself (the ground of being).

So for Kastrup:

• Phenomena = experiences.
• Noumenon = the experiencer / universal consciousness.

🔹 A Key Passage (paraphrased)

Kastrup often writes something like:

“The noumenal is not beyond consciousness, but rather consciousness itself in its pure, unconditioned form. The phenomenal is the way this consciousness presents itself to itself, under self-reflective dissociation.”

✅ In short:

For Kastrup, phenomenal reality = appearances in mind; noumenal reality = mind itself, the ground of all appearances.

Would you like me to also show how this maps onto Vedanta’s categories (phenomenal = Maya/Nama-Rupa, noumenal = Brahman) so you can see the East–West resonance?