Immanuel Kant Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === The doctrine of transcendental idealism === {{See also | Transcendental idealism}} The section of the ''Critique'' entitled "The transcendental aesthetic" introduces Kant's famous metaphysics of [[transcendental idealism]]. Something is "transcendental" if it is a necessary condition for the possibility of experience, and "idealism" denotes some form of mind-dependence that must be further specified. (The correct interpretation of Kant's own specification remains controversial.){{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(d)}} The metaphysical thesis, then, states that human beings only experience and know phenomenal appearances, not independent things-in-themselves, because space and time are nothing but the subjective forms of intuition that we ourselves contribute to experience.{{sfn|Rohlf|2020|loc = §3}}<ref>Kant ''CPuR'' A43/B59–60, A369</ref> Nevertheless, although Kant says that space and time are "transcendentally ideal"—the ''pure forms'' of human sensibility, rather than part of nature or reality as it exists in-itself—he also claims that they are "empirically real", by which he means "that 'everything that can come before us externally as an object' is in both space and time, and that our internal intuitions of ourselves are in time".<ref>Kant ''CPuR'' A28/B44, A34–35/B51–51</ref>{{sfn|Rohlf|2020|loc = §3}} However we may interpret Kant's doctrine, he clearly wishes to distinguish his position from the [[subjective idealism]] of [[George Berkeley|Berkeley]].{{sfn|Stang|2022|loc = §2.3}} [[Paul Guyer]], although critical of many of Kant's arguments in this section, nevertheless writes of the "Transcendental Aesthetic" that it "not only lays the first stone in Kant's constructive theory of knowledge; it also lays the foundation for both his critique and his reconstruction of traditional metaphysics. It argues that all genuine knowledge requires a sensory component, and thus that metaphysical claims that transcend the possibility of sensory confirmation can never amount to knowledge."{{sfn|Guyer|2014|p=60}} ====Interpretive disagreements==== One interpretation, known as the "two-world" interpretation, regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot access the "[[thing-in-itself]]". On this particular view, the thing-in-itself is not numerically identical the phenomenal empirical object. However, Kant also speaks of the thing in itself or ''transcendent object'' as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain, but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone; this is known as the "two-aspect" view.{{sfn|Rohlf|2020|loc = §§3.1–3.2}}{{sfn|Stang|2022|loc = §§4–5}} On this alternative view, the same objects which we attribute empirical properties like color, size, and shape are also, as considered as they are in themselves, the things-in-themselves otherwise inaccessible to human knowledge.{{citation_needed|date=January 2024}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page