Editing Immanuel Kant (section)

=== 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  Kant's doctrine is interpreted, he wished 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, 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, meaning that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, and therefore cannot access the "[[thing-in-itself]]". On this particular view, the thing-in-itself is not numerically identical to the phenomenal empirical object.<ref>{{cite book |last=Allison |first=Henry E. |title=Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense |year=2004 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300102666 |pages=25–28}}</ref> Kant also spoke, however, 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, a different interpretation argues 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 to which we attribute empirical properties like color, size, and shape are also, when considered as they are in themselves, the things-in-themselves, otherwise inaccessible to human knowledge.<ref>{{cite book |last=Langton |first=Rae |title=Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves |year=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199243174|pages=105–107}}</ref>