- the object, itself inaccessible to experience, to which a phenomenon is referred for the basis or cause of its sense content.
- a thing in itself, as distinguished from a phenomenon or thing as it appears.
- something that can be the object only of a purely intellectual, nonsensuous intuition.
- (in the philosophy of Kant) a thing as it is in itself, not perceived or interpreted, incapable of being known, but only inferred from the nature of experience
- the object of a purely intellectual intuition
