| Thus he seems to have been more like a Kantian believer in unknowable noumena than like a Vienna Circle proponent of the view that talk of God is not even meaningful. |
| Kant also says that the categories can be applied to phenomena, but not to noumena. |
| Following this, Kant argued we were only capable of perceiving phenomenon, or appearances, while the noumena, or spiritual essence, lay eternally beyond our reach. |
| Nor have we any right to reason from phenomena to noumena, or to say that the former authenticate the latter. |
| Kant insisted that we can never know the noumena, for we can never get beyond phenomena. |
| For the skeptics, Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena was redolent of earlier metaphysics. |
