[Music] Philosophy, the age of revolution. From 1750 to the 1900s. "There are two worlds: The world of experience sensed by our bodies, and the world as it is in itself". Transcendental idealism and knowledge. Immanuel Kant's analysis. One of the many goals of philosophy throughout history has been to define the way we get to know about things and learn. For a long time, the debate had been dominated by two main currents. On one side there was empiricism which claimed that we can only learn through experience and our senses. On the other hand, rationalism proposed that reason and thoughts are enough to let us learn. Nevertheless, according to german philosopher Immanuel Kant both theories were limited. The problem with empiricism, represented by David Hume, is that it inevitably suggests that absolute knowledge is not possible. No matter how much we observe that a situation is repeating itself, we'll never be able to ensure that it is a law. We can't predict the future we can only stick to the tendency of expecting it to happen again, which is a little problematic. Regarding rationalism, the problem is that our minds are limited; therefore, they cannot be entirely independent from our experience. If we have never seen a penguin it would be fairly impossible to realize that they exist through mere reason. None of the options seemed to be complete. Kant's quest was to create a new and more complete theory taking the best of both. He named it "transcendental idealism". The name might sound slightly exaggerated, but it is actually simple. For Kant, transcendental only means that it is an idealism that already comes from our inside. Let's explain the theory step by step. First, we can all agree that our goal is to achieve knowledge or trustworthy information. That's why we have science, right? But, what type of knowledge can we obtain from it? Kant starts defining two types of judgment; That is, two ways in which we can express knowledge. The first one is analytic judgment. As its name suggests it just analyzes a concept. For example, saying "Penguins are birds". This phrase doesn't really add new knowledge because being a penguin already means being a bird. Properly said, the predicate is already contained in the subject. But the most important part is that it is universal knowledge. We'll never find a penguin that isn't a bird. This is a priori knowledge, which means that we can be completely sure that it is true, even if we don't test it with our experience. This is all thanks to the definition that we humans established for the word "penguin". Then, we can conclude that all information from an analytic judgment will be universal but will not add any new knowledge. On the other side, we have synthetic judgments, which do add new information. For example, "The penguin is happy". This phrase tells us something we didn't know about the penguin, but it has a little problem. It won't always be true. The penguin could be sad. To know how our penguin really is, we'll have to find out by observing it. That's why this is a posteriori knowledge. We cannot affirm it unless our experience tells us so. Then, information in a synthetic judgment is not universal, but it does provide new facts. Now, none fulfills the needs of science. We need judgments that provide new facts, but that are universal at the same time. In other words, a combination. A synthetic a priori judgment. But, is this possible? Of course! You see, experience alone is not universal, and reason alone cannot provide new knowledge. But, what if they help each other? Experience can provide new knowledge, and reason can develop it to discover a universal fact. more rigorously stated for khan the two elements that make up knowledge are sensibility as the means of contact with the outside world and understanding as the capacity of using concepts that is the amazing part of kant's theory but how does this collaboration happen according to kant the human mind already comes programmed with some concepts that mold our experience of the world to make it comprehensible this means that reality or the nominal world could be a little different but thanks to those concepts we can understand it as a phenomenal world the outside world provides raw information without a comprehensible shape and our minds provide the tools to give it a shape and transform it into useful information of course this has a process for kant there are three formality levels or three stages in which we shape the information we get from the universe the first one called transcendental aesthetic is in charge of helping our sensibility everything that our senses can reveal about the world at this point the tools that our mind provides are space and time this means that our minds allow us to imagine objects in a place and in a moment it doesn't really matter if outside ourselves space and time aren't real what really matters is that they are inside ourselves to make possible our understanding of the world it is as if time and space were the lines in a notebook that help us write they are just a useful reference that make the world seem a little more organized that's why it is called aesthetic as a matter of fact can't believe that this is the reason why mathematics work since our brains order everything in space and time they also make everything measurable that's why our calculations are reliable and we can trust them once this happens we can move on to the next level transcendental analytics which deals with understanding here our brain will add some extra concepts that will leave information ready to interact with the things we know and become new knowledge all these concepts are what can't called categories of understanding which are 12 unity plurality totality reality negation limitation inverse and subsistence causality and dependence community possibility existence and necessity each of these concepts give a little more coherence and order to our experience for example causality and dependence allow us to get the cause and effect relation between two events the previous stage made perception easier but this one makes connection easier just as if we were to pack our knowledge into bricks that together can become something bigger these blocks are concepts here we have to notice something if we didn't have experience we wouldn't be able to generate concepts but if we weren't able to generate concepts our experience would be useless that is why i can't believe that knowledge is only possible when we connect sensibility to understanding according to kant due to that physics can also be considered a real science since it connects math to experience now that our knowledge has been packed it can be used that is the job of the next level transcendental dialectics here is where reason comes in in a way recent takes the blocks that we created in the previous level and with them it built something new the only problem here is that reason doesn't always stay limited to the concepts that come from our experience for example when we use imagination or fantasy we work with unreal or false concepts sometimes the mind forgets a little about experience and that is inevitable but we can be careful when we watch stars in the sky they seem to be small but we know that it is an illusion they are massive that's how we should deal with the so-called transcendental ideas they include concepts such as oneself the world and god you see kant never says they are not real he just says they are not in our scope the problem is that they do not come out of experience and if we try to apply the categories of understanding to them it would be like trying to screw using a harmer. In other words, we are not made to turn this knowledge into measurable science, but surely we can believe in them. For kant although we cannot prove their existence through a theoretical reason these ideas are useful for our minds because they play an important role in stimulating our curiosity and research. Moreover Kant believed they are also important for morals. In everything we mentioned previously we have the key to know what is science and what´s not. All knowledge we can derive from and prove through experience can be science, but things we can't experiment simply can't be scientific. As we said previously maths and physics are backed up partly by experience and partly by our internal concepts so they are acceptable as science. But metaphysics isn't as lucky. Since it tries to go beyond our perception it simply doesn't have a direct backup and we won't ever be sure that its theories are right. To summarize human science might be limited since there are things we cannot perceive, but, as humans, we are not required to know about them. The best we can do is try to get the most of the things that are in our scope. Human reason is burdened with questions it cannot dismiss but which it also cannot answer if you enjoyed the explanation we presented in this video we invite you to discover some more of our content produced by "Kanik Time" in case there's any doubt clarification or topic proposal will remain at your service please feel free to leave your comments like the video and subscribe