Noemata

Noemata, according to ancient Greek philosophy, are the objects of thought of the Individual Mind (Exonoesis), that is, actual information, as opposed to potential, indefinite information latent in the Universal Mind (Hyponoesis) (see Anoemata, Essay Paranoetic Information Semantics).

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Noeme

The fundamental reality, called Hyponoesis, manifests itself in a variety of differentiated aspects, which I call Noetic Representational Entities, short Noemes. A Noeme can be manifested as a physical entity, such as our world consists of, or a mental entity, such as consciousness.
What I call the Individual Mind (Exonoesis) is a complex Noeme. Simple Noemes constitute more complex Noemes, such as the self-consciousness of a human being. A complex physical Noeme is for example the biological organism.
Noemes are not exclusively physical or mental, but always consist of different noetic representational entities. There is however a certain primacy of a particular Noeme, which renders a special configuration or organization of Noemes the idiosyncratic structure that makes it a unique individual entity.
(see Essay Hyponoesis and Noemes)

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Noesis

nÒhsi$ (noesis) - thought, in wider and narrower senses:
- life is defined for animals as capacity for perception and for men of perception or thought (Aristot. Nichom. Ethics, 1170a 16).
- it is satisfactory to call science and reasoning (episteme and dianoia), taken together, thought (Plato, Rep. 533e).
For Proclus noesis is pure intuitive apprehension, whereas episteme (science) and dianoia (reasoning) is discursive.
(J.O. Urmson: The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary, Duckworth 1990)

Noesis is intellectual activity, the exercise of reason. It was taken intact from the Greek, where it means "intelligence" or "thought", based on the verb noein (to think).
(Norman W. Schur: A Dictionary of Challenging Words, Penguin 1987)

Originally, the Greek distinguished between knowledge as deduced from rational or scientific thinking (dianoia, intellect) and knowledge derived from pure thinking (noesis, reason). The intellectual knowledge belongs to the lower part of the Kosmos Noetos, that is, to scientific and mathematical objects, while the intuitional knowledge of the NOESIS is based on the unchangeable and eternal IDEAS.
(see also Dianoia)

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Noetic, Noetological

The adjective noetic (noh ET ik) describes things pertaining pertaining to the intellect, as does the Greek source, noetikos, and is used as well to mean "purely intellectual" (as opposed to emotional or intuitive) or "abstract". Noetics, treated as a singular noun, is the science of the mind or intellect. [usage:] Scientists must put aside bias, preference, or emotion, and determine results purely noetically.
(Norman W. Schur: A Dictionary of Challenging Words, Penguin 1987)

1. In general, cognitive.
2. In contrast to empirical and sensuous, pertaining to that which can be apprehended by reason alone.
(Antony Flew: A Dictionary of Philosophy, St. Martin's Press 1979)

Noetic Energy

The Universal Mind (Hyponoesis) can be conceived of (in analogy to quantum physics) as a noetic energy field: The noetic energy as identified with Hyponoesis unfolds itself manifestly on infinitely varied levels of energy potentials (energy gradation). Each energy level could be viewed as a world in itself, although all worlds are simultaneously interconnected and interpenetrating each other because they have the same basic energy (= Hyponoesis).

Noetic Evolution or Noetic Genesis

The keynote Essay The Evolution of Exonoesis discusses the manifestation and evolution of the Individual Mind as a process of individuation. Through the act of self-referentiality the Universal Mind manifests itself as different aspects or phases. The interaction between different phases effects the actualization of potential entities, e.g. consciousness as the product of mind-brain interaction. The process of self-actualization of the Universal Mind constantly produces the multitude of aspects and entities known and unknown to us, such as matter, physical objects, emotions, thoughts, etc. The Mind-Body interaction results in the personality of the individual human being. As a consequence, mind is not a product of the biological evolution, as held by most academic scientists, but has a mental evolution of its own kind.

Noetic Pattern

Noetic patterns are idiosyncratic features or properties that make up the unique constitution of an Individual Mind (Exonoesis). Hyponoesis (Universal Mind) manifests itself as an infinite variety of noetic patterns. A coherent set of noetic patterns constitutes a specific individual (mental or physical) form (Exonoesis, Exohyle).
(see Essay Noetic Patterns of Exonoesis)

Noetic Space

Generally, the symbolic realm or domain of our mind. Although our mind has no spatial properties as such, we can think of ideas and thoughts residing in an infinite field of noetic activity. Therefore, the concept of 'space' is a metaphor from the spatial world we live in and is meant to help us grasp the infinity of our mind.
In a narrower sense, I use the term for the field of activity of noetic or Transrational Thinking that is a superior form of thought than mere rational thought. Only transrational thought is capable of exploring the infinite Mind-Space or the Universal Mind, whereas rational thought is intrinsically limited to the intellective space of the Individual Mind.

Noetic Sphere

In Essay Spheres of Thought I introduce the concept of 'Spheres of Thought':
Every human being involved in the act of thinking creates noetic spheres of thought. Within a certain sphere, the views or theories are true, as long as they stick to logical consistency. If we take for example two contradictory views, such as materialism and idealism, we cannot declare one to be true and the other to be false, because, inside their noetic spheres, both views are true. The views of a materialistic thinker are true within the noetic spheres he created by his thought, and the views of the idealistic thinker are as well true, as long as they are considered in his noetic sphere.

Therefore, all particular views are relative noetic spheres. They are related to a certain thinker at a certain place and time in history, under certain circumstances and certain influences. The question is: is there an absolute sphere? This absolute sphere must unite all relative spheres, it is the unity of being and thinking, the unity of the world, the oneness of all phenomena. The relative spheres manifest the plurality of the world and its relativism. The absolute sphere is the basic unity of the world, the pure metaphysical principle of oneness. This absolute sphere is infinite, and not defined by boundaries as the relative spheres.

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Noetician

I distinguish between the mystic and the noetician (= Transrational Thinker): Whereas the mystic experiences oneness physically and psychically by being one with everything and the Godhead, the Noetician knows that everything is one in its essence or substance, but he does not experience it actually. Whereas the mystic is predominantly enshrouded in an overwhelming experience and thereby does often not understand what he experiences, the Transrational Thinker [Noetician] always knows and understands the higher dimension without being overwhelmed by overweening emotions of experience.
The Noetician, by virtue of his highly developed thinking faculty, is able of rendering a detailed and systematic description of the truth he has come to know by Transrational Thinking (Paranoesis).

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Non-local information

Non-locality is a concept occurring in quantum physics.

Non-local influences, if they existed, would not be mediated by fields or by anything else. When A connects to B non-locally, nothing crosses the intervening space....
Non-local influences do not diminish with distance. They are as potent at a million miles as at a millimeter.
Non-local influences act instantaneously.
A non-local interaction links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay. A non-local interaction is, in short, unmediated, unmitigated, and immediate.
... these unmediated connections are present not only in rare and exotic circumstances, but underlie all the events of everday life. Non-local connections are ubiquitous because reality itself is non-local.
(Nick Herbert: Quantum Reality, Anchor Books, 1985, p. 214 f.)

Nonlocality is a hypothetical condition in which location ceases to exist. [David] Bohm believes that at some level of the subatomic landscape, all semblance of location breaks down and particles... are able to register what happens to one another, not because they are sending signals back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion and they are actually all part of the same fundamental and cosmic unity.
(Michael Talbot: Mysticism and the New Physics, Arkana 1992, p. 146)

Local information is information acquired and retained by the Individual Mind. The ordinary mind can only retrieve local information form its memory and therefore our knowledge is limited to the amount of local information that can be successfully retained and retrieved on demand.
Non-local information is information that is foreign or exterior to the Individual Mind, information that is private to other minds or is stored in any kind of material medium, such as books or as electronic data. Whatever we as Individual Minds do not know is non-local, unless we are not able to retrieve once acquired or learned information. Non-local information cannot be accessed by our rational mind, unless through the process of learning, reading or other ways of data acquisition.
There is, however, a latent faculty in each Individual Mind that allows to access and retrieve any kind of information (local or non-local) without a conscious effort of recollection, association, learning or other forms of data appropriation. Transrational Thinking directly and immediately accesses all non-local information without the process of acquiring it first. This is a kind of non-local knowledge. The information is obtained from the Universal Mind, wherein all information resides.

See also Metaphysical Principles on nonlocal information:
The type of information that can be accessed by common thought is predominantly and at most everything that is acquired through perceptions and experience and at least what can be recalled from memory (personal legacy). There is, however, information available that is not locally stored in the brain, but resident in the "universal memory" of the Hyponoesis. This information percolates through unconsciously in telepathic and precognitive events, and consciously in Transrational Thinking (universal legacy). (cf. C.G.Jung's personal and collective psyche).

Non-local mind

This is essentially a definition of nonlocal mind: mind that is linked to all else, mind that is linked to all other moments and places and persons.
(Larry Dossey, M.D.: Recovering the Soul, Bantam Books, 1989, p. 183)

Chris Clarke, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Southampton...argued...that non-locality is actually fundamental to the world and our experience of it. Both mind (our awareness of the world from the inside) and quantum physics (arising from our observation of the world from the outside) are inherently non-local and are two sides of the same coin. Space and time are, on this view, manifestations of the breaking-down of this fundamental non-locality. Consciousness arises from the interplay between mind (developing within the non-local aspects of the universe) and matter (which is the localized aspect of the universe where it has broken down).
(Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 1, No. 2, 1994, p 283)

I connect two meanings with this term:
a) the mind of Transrational Thinking (Paranoesis) that is able to obtain non-local information (see previous entry)
b) the Universal Mind (Hyponoesis) that is not local to an organism or other form of physical organization, as the Individual Mind is to the body, but is an undivided whole common to all minds.

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Noology

A term introduced by R. Eucken (1846-1926) designating his theory of the independent spiritual life which transcends the individual and the world. Philosophy, for Eucken, is the expression of universal life or Spiritual Life (Geistesleben), which "... is an active reality that operates in and through man and can be regarded as the movement of reality towards the full actualization of Spirit." (Fredrick Copleston: A History of Philosophy, Vol. VII, p. 385).

Noologie, von gr. nous, 'Geist', und logos 'Lehre', die Geistlehre; insbes. Name der Philosophie R. Euckens, die ein selbständiges Geistesleben annimmt und dessen Erklärung aus materiellen und psychologischen Ursachen ablehnt.
(J. Hoffmeister: Wörterbuch der Philosophischen Begriffe, Meiner Verlag, 1955)

Noologisch, ein von R. Eucken eingeführter Neologismus zur Bezeichnung alles dessen, was sich auf den Geist in seinem selbständigen Eigenleben bezieht. R. Eucken stellt die noologische Methode, die das als zeitlos bestimmte Eigenleben des Geistes untersucht, der psychologischen Methode gegenüber, die die geistig-seelischen Bewusstseinsprozesse des Menschen untersucht.
(Philosophie Lexikon, Rowohlt 1991)

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Noosphere

Furthermore, his [man's] capacity for self-conscious thought and the production of cultures has added a new "layer" to the earth's surface, which Teilhard [De Chardin] calls the "noosphere", distinct from, yet superimposed on, the biosphere. The noosphere, or "thinking layer", forms the unique environment of man, marking him off from all other animals.
(Paul Edwards, ed.: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Publishing, Vol. VIII, p. 83)

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Noumenon

Phenomena and noumena. These terms mean literally 'things that appear' and 'things that are thought'. Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses. This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy.
[Kant] The intelligible world of noumena is known by pure reason, which gives us knowledge of things as they are. Things in the sensible world (phenomena) are known through our senses and known only as they appear. To know noumena we must abstract from and exclude sensible concepts such as space and time.
(Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995)

'Thing-in-itself', contrasted with appearance or phenomenon in the philosophy of Kant. Noumena are the external source of experience but are not themselves knowable and can only be inferred from experience of phenomena. Although inaccessible to speculative reason, the noumenal world of God, freedom, and immortality is apprehended through man's capacity for acting as a moral agent.
(Antony Flew: A Dictionary of Philosophy, St. Martin's Press 1979)

The most salient feature of noumena is that they are not objects of intuition but problems 'unavoidably bound up with the limitation of our sensibility', namely 'whether there may not be objects' for a 'quite different intuition and a quite different understanding from ours' (Critique of Pure Reason A 287/B 344).
(Howard Caygill: A Kant Dictionary, Blackwell, 1995)

cf. Phenomenon.

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Nous

noà$ (nous).
(1) Intelligence in general
(2) Immediate awareness, intuition
(3) Intuitive intellect, intuitive reason, concerned with noeta (thoughts) only. Plato also distinguished nous from dianoia (discursive reason). Aristotle regards nous as independent of the body and thus immune from destruction on the death of the body.
(J.O. Urmson: The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary, Duckworth 1990)

(Greek for: mind) A term used by the Presocratics to indicate knowledge and reason. For Plato it meant the rational part of the soul. For Aristotle it was the intellect, in which he distinguished between active and passive reason, the former alone being immortal and eternal.
(Antony Flew: A Dictionary of Philosophy, St. Martin's Press 1979)

In Greek philosophy, the highest form of rationality which is capable of grasping the fundamental principles of reality. In contrast to perception, which delivers awareness of the changing, accidental properties of things, nous consists in understanding their essential, immutable nature. Moreover, it supersedes belief, which may attain truth but falls short of explaining the why and wherefore of things. For Aristotle, the unmoved mover of the universe was a cosmis Nous.
(Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995)

das Vermögen der geistigen Wahrnehmung, soviel wie Verstand, bei Plato und Aristoteles der edelste und höchste der drei Seelenteile (vgl. Aristoteles, De an. III 4, 429a 23, De gen. anim. II 3 736b 27), seit Anaxagoras auch die sinnvoll wirkende, harmonisch ordnende Weltkraft neben dem Weltstoff, der weltordnende Geist (Demiurg, Weltgeist).
(J. Hoffmeister: Wörterbuch der Philosophischen Begriffe, Meiner Verlag, 1955)