These internal problems with Kant’s argument suggest to Schopenhauer that Kant’s reference to the thing-in-itself as a mind-independent object (or as an object of any kind) is misconstrued. Schopenhauer maintains instead that if we are to refer to the thing-in-itself, then we must come to an awareness of it, not by invoking the relationship of causality – a relationship where the cause and the effect are logically understood to be distinct objects or events (since self-causation is a contradicti