In philosophy, noetics is a branch of metaphysics concerned with the study of mind as well as intellect. There is also a reference to the science of noetics, which covers the field of thinking and knowing, thought and knowledge, as well as mental operations, processes, states, and products through the data of the written word.
Philosophy
The term itself means "the proper exercise of nous" whereas nous is described as "the highest faculty in man, through which - provided it is purified - he knows God or the inner essences or principles of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception". In ancient Greek and medieval philosophy, noetic topics included the doctrine of the active intellect and the doctrine of the Divine Intellect. The entire philosophy of noetics, which include the notions by Immanuel Kant, John Locke, René Descartes, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others is involved with thinking of intellection by analogy with vision. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that viewing the world scientifically must be according to the Newtonian system. This constitutes the so-called "noetic skepticism" because we cannot determine if the Newtonian world is indeed the truth. Late modern philosopher and phenomenologistFranz Brentano introduced a distinction between sensory and noetic consciousness: the former describes presentations of sensory objects or intuitions, while the latter describes the thinking of concepts.
Other uses
Thinkers like Lawrence Krader consider noetics as a science, an empirical discipline that concerns itself with the processes, states, and events in the real world of space and time. Noetics is also useful in psychology such as the way it overlaps with Jamesian psychology, which deals with a range of phenomena that influence our thinking and knowing. The Institute of Noetic Sciences describes noetic sciences as "how beliefs, thoughts, and intentions affect the physical world". Since the 1970s and the foundation of the Institute of Noetic Sciences by NASA astronautEdgar Mitchell and others, the term "noetics" has been adopted by several authors such as Christian de Quincey in Deep Spirit: Cracking the Noetic Code and Dan Brown in The Lost Symbol, who write about consciousness and spirituality. Thinker Pierre Grimes leads the Noetic Society for the Study of Dialogue and the Exploration of Dialectic, a philosophical counseling group.
