Kant's Transcendental Idealism 

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That argument about the candle and continuity actually just confirms Kant’s theory. If you leave a room and return, the changed appearance of the candle is not a testimony to the actual candle but your mind’s perception of the candle in time. Again, what you perceive is not the object directly.

This is so epic, love the debate part which really shows the educational nature of the video.

Love the video! Just a small nitpick in the beginning: I don’t think Kant states that Space and Time do not exist outside the mind. He instead would point out that Space and Time are among the conditions of the possibility of OUR experience because it is impossible to know/experience anything without them. Our phenomena are Space and Time dependent; the noumena on the other hand can be of the same exact look and temporality-we just don’t know this because we necessarily are limited to our experience/perception. That’s what’s called the Veil of Perception or the Transcendental Problem: what is certain other than experience-itself and how can one express that the noumena exist when by definition we can’t know it? Kant used determinism for example. One can rationalize that everything is causa and effect, but we cannot analyze the entire reality to realize that, due to our limitations of perceptions. Pure reason towards proving determinism is impossible. A sort of ‘belief reason’ on the other hand, which science needs to function, is all ok so long as we are conscious of our belief in such a noumenal reality and our condition of relegation to phenomenal reality. Why do we assume that the candle is still burning after we look away from it? Simply because we adopt a noumenal belief in the world outside of experience. Interestingly, babies who have not yet developed object permanence would find this unfathomable. Many philosophers tried to solve the transcendental problem including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Foucault; though as of right now I do think they just reorder logic and conceptions to hide the simple fact that experience is all that is ‘certain’. If you see a ghost, the ghost might not be ‘real’, but your ‘seeing image’ of the ghost is entirely ‘real’. I do have to dive more into Kant’s work though. All with a grain of salt of course!

About the question of the burning candle. When a person sees the burning candle, that candle exists in the real world, burning or not. It exists as a noumena, but that person sees only the appearance of the burning candle as a phenomena. Regardless of whether that person leaves the room or stays in it, the candle continues to exist burning. Thus, the human mind will see it burn as a phenomena if he stays in the room or it will continue to burn if he decides to leave. In either case, the unobserved burning candle does not invalidate Kant's Transcendental Idealism.

It's always a bliss to read about KANT!! And you made it ease for me to understand his subtle terminology and Philosophy! Thanks mate 👍!!

Ok here is my response: I reconcile the time/space candle argument by the simple insistence that noumena have shape and motion. The human conception of time doesn't have to be real for objects to move, we need only see that movement is an object + two or more locations and see location as being the set of static distances from one object to all other objects Therefore the candle melting is merely the noumena moving and thus changing shape, but time hasn't passed and there is no future or past, the 12 o'clock is only a clock arm having moved, the Sun setting is merely the motion of the Earth rotating, and the seasons changing is the motion of Earth revolving around the Sun, and so on. For veil of perception, even a brain in a jar exist within a jar. "I think therefore I am" and existence necessitates a greater reality of some kind because something can't exist within itself, something exist within a reality. Even if we can not directly perceive things as they are (and science says we can't) things ARE simply because *nothing* can't (or should I say Kant?) *be.* Let me know what you think.

This is truly an amazing video. I was startled by how good it is made. The debate was spot on, and very accurate.

amazing video. genuinely one of the most helpful explanations i have seen of anything, ever.

The concluding remark raises a compelling point. After studying direct realism and indirect realism for some time, I've found myself to be an indirect realist. I've written about it quite extensively. I am drawn to this line of thinking from my contemplation on how information undergoes distortion as it traverses through the complexities of the mind, resulting in perceptions that may diverge from the actual object. The final assertion is a good point, as it holds true that our understanding seems confined to the veil and anything beyond that is mere speculation. Though, my own interpretation of indirect realism is that the outside world is totally unknowable, which I have since found that this is phenomenalism. I do hope that direct realism is true, but we can't seem to get away from the mind's interpretation of reality. Furthermore, as a Christian, I'm compelled to consider how my worldview may apply to this. It's possible that my faith posits a direct perception of the world. Perhaps God would give us a direct view of his creation so that we can see it directly. So, it is a hard one.

Best explanation of Kant’s transcendental idealism I’ve seen yet. Great job!

I have a test on this tmr. im now fighting for my life to understand this bc my teacher does not explain it quite well. this channel is saving me

Thanks🙏 you made this very easy

Been waiting for this. Thanks Charles and John...

The problem with Kants idealism is that what he calls the noumena includes the mind of others as they are outside his own mind. So his subjective idea that others mind operate same way as his is refuted by his own argument. That’s why his idealism itself looses ground in the end.

Thanks for the upload .

This channel is so perfect, thank you

I'm reading Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Although he can write with prolixity I love the challenge of extracting the germane and cogent arguments. This video explains a key concept of the book effectively and with clarity.

such a cool instructional video, thank you for making it make sense... subbed!

finally ! I was struggling through this very important idea

The causation argument is an interesting critique of transcendental idealism, but seems to me to be answered by Kant’s theory itself. After all, if time and space are sensory tools that generate the perception of the Ding an sich or thing-in-itself, then it is necessarily the case that we would perceive a temporal change in the essential object by perceiving it through the temporal sense, for that is the very mechanism by which the temporal sense generates perception: temporally. In other words, the argument that the Ding-an-sich must change because we perceive a change is simply the argument that there is no distinction between noumenon and phenomenon: there is no metaphysical binary, and I know this because I experience the phenomenon and know it to accurately reflect the noumenon. Well, how? How can you know that your perception is, in fact, reality? We might as well say the sky IS blue, as though that were an essential property of the sky simply because we perceive it as blue. But to a colour blind person with an inability to see blue the sky is grey. Their perception of the sky is different to mine, and yet they still have a perception of the sky regardless of its lack of blue-ness. Similarly many creatures who see colours beyond the range of human perception will perceive the objects of the world quite differently to us in terms of their colour properties, and yet those objects continue to be perceived by us as one colour. We call the perception of different frequencies of light blue or red or green, etc. but that does not make them that perception, they are simply frequencies of light and we might think of an alien species that hears sound frequencies as colour and sees light frequencies as variations in pitch. Would that fundamentally change the Ding an sich? No; it has not changed, only the perception has changed. In the same way when we think of the aliens in Arrival who experience time very differently to us, that does not mean that the universe is essentially different because of their existence, it merely reminds us that our temporal perception is not reflective of the intrinsic properties of the essence of the universe. As you say, modern science’s theories of time dilation (and we might also think of quantum theory and the idea of cause and effect not displaying the kind of relationship we expect) support the idea of transcendental idealism. It is not that temporality has no validity as a sense: just as the eye senses frequencies of light so the temporal sense senses cause and effect relationships. But cause and effect relationships are not themselves time. Time is the meaning we construct out of the information relayed to our mind by the temporal sense, and no more proves that time as we perceive it is accurate as the existence of an eye and the perception of a colour proves the accuracy of colour perception. I would add one further point which is that we tend to assume that because our perception is consistent (i.e. the unclouded sky is always blue or the candle always burns down whether I watch it or not) that therefore the object is consistent. This does not follow. Consistency of perception is necessary to the construction of meaning and therefore any perception we have is necessarily going to be consistent. We miss the point here in the same was as when we ask: why am I so special to have this gift of consciousness? No non-conscious thing can ask this, so the special quality we believe ourselves to have is fallacious because it *requires* consciousness to ask the question in the first place. Similarly we ask: how can the world not be consistent if we consistently perceive it as consistent? When any perception in order to be meaningful has to be consistent as opposed to random and chaotic. Perception itself is an ordering and meaning-imbuing process so naturally it makes the world appear consistent. Ergo, we do not know anything about the true essence of anything that requires perception to perceive it, and to use perceptions as evidence of essence does not strengthen the realist argument but undermines it.

Great discussion; thank you!

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Excellent summary and the objections are very good and thorough.

this is why I like Kant. A great video

on saying you need time for causality: the Nobel prize in physics 2022 was awarded to 3 scientists who show the universe is not locally real by 2 unrelated particles being affected by one another. In other words, information can be shared at a distance without temporally restricted data like light and therefore time to bridge the gap. In more other words, you can be affected by more than just your immediate, “real”, surroundings, giving credence to kants assertion that there exists a world of things in and of themselves that we cannot know, and we can only know what we perceive through the filter of intuition.

My issue against Kant's epistemology is that it's foundationalist. Please do a video on Fraassen's empirical stance.

Well done. Thanks!

Excellent presentation.

Very beautifully explained

Fantastic work

On One hand I agree with Kant. Its true that we transcribe things in our mind when we doesnt see but just think about them. But on the other hand I dont agree with him that we never can know the noumenos. Because ıf we really couldnt know things themself we could not know they are really exist to. So thats why we couldn't know anything. Also I think doing ontology depends on accepting that the reality of things are knowable. By the way thanks for the video. Its really well-prepared and I really enjoy it.

It's an interesting way to present. Feeling I'm not the one the speaker is speaking to. Thanks for the video!

3:53 Time is a tool made to describe an observation, not a consequence of an observation. We observed that moment's pass and decided to keep track of that and call it time and develop the system to measure it. How does a day fit within 24 hours? We defined a day as 24 hours. We could have measured it or counted it any other way we wanted to. This reminds me of the puddle who finds himself in a pothole and says this pothole perfectly fits me. It must have been made for me.

God sent 🥰😍thank you soooo much guys kant confused me but you guys made me understand his concepts

You guys are live saver. Thank you!

I think that since you started the candle, you created that continuity in your mind; since that is where time and space exist, you deposited that scenario and made it something real and continuous...if that makes sense

That was an awesome script, such a good debate :)

" I am reminded of a great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. He is a specimen of those people who are absolutely in the mind. He lived according to mind so totally that people used to set their watches, whenever they saw Immanuel Kant going to the university. Never - it may rain, it may rain fire, it may rain cats and dogs, it may be utterly cold, snow falling … Whatever the situation, Kant will reach the university at exactly the same time all the year round, even on holidays. Such a fixed, almost mechanical … He would go on holiday at exactly the same time, remain in the university library, which was specially kept open for him, because otherwise what would he do there the whole day? And he was a very prominent, well-known philosopher, and he would leave the university at exactly the same time every day. One day it happened … It had rained and there was too much mud on the way - one of his shoes got stuck in the mud. He did not stop to take the shoe out because that would make him reach the university a few seconds later, and that was impossible. He left the shoe there. He just arrived with one shoe. The students could not believe it. Somebody asked, “What happened to the other shoe?” He said, “It got stuck in the mud, so I left it there, knowing perfectly well nobody is going to steal one shoe. When I return in the evening, then I will pick it up. But I could not have been late.” A woman proposed to him: “I want to be married to you” - a beautiful young woman. Perhaps no woman has ever received such an answer, before or after Immanuel Kant. Either you say, “Yes,” or you say, “No. Excuse me.” Immanuel Kant said, “I will have to do a great deal of research.” The woman asked, “About what?” He said, “I will have to look in all the marriage manuals, all the books concerning marriage, and find out all the pros and cons - whether to marry or not to marry.” The woman could not imagine that this kind of answer had ever been given to any woman before. Even no is acceptable, even yes, although you are getting into a misery, but it is acceptable. But this kind of indifferent attitude towards the woman - he did not say a single sweet word to her. He did not say anything about her beauty, his whole concern was his mind. He had to convince his mind whether or not marriage is logically the right thing. It took him three years. It was really a long search. Day and night he was working on it, and he had found three hundred reasons against marriage and three hundred reasons for marriage. So the problem even after three years was the same. One friend suggested out of compassion, “You wasted three years on this stupid research. In three years you would have experienced all these six hundred, without any research. You should have just said yes to that woman. There was no need to do so much hard work. Three years would have given you all the pros and cons - existentially, experientially.” But Kant said, “I am in a fix. Both are equal, parallel, balanced. There is no way to choose.” The friend suggested, “Of the pros you have forgotten one thing: that whenever there is a chance, it is better to say yes and go through the experience. That is one thing more in favor of the pros. The cons cannot give you any experience, and only experience has any validity.” He understood, it was intellectually right. He immediately went to the woman’s house, knocked on her door. Her old father opened the door and said, “Young man, you are too late. You took too long in your research. My girl is married and has two children.” That was the last thing that was ever heard about his marriage. From then on no woman ever asked him, and he was not the kind of man to ask anybody. He remained unmarried."

How about ideal realism: what we perceive are other minds. One subjectivity perceives another subjectivity as an external object, but what exists in and of itself is only subjective experiences. But one could experience nothing were there not other existent mental states. The things in themselves are other existent mental states. An interface of mind(s).

Kant basically created a wall which no one manages to jump over but he claims that he jumped over

Wow this is good, I'm watching this at 1a.m

Thanks a lot for the videos! Really helps for preparing to my final exams.

The continuity problem is basically not accepting Hume's problem of induction. Also, existence is out of the topic, it is not an ontological issue but an epistemological one. You simply can't be sure that the canndle will melt to very last part of it, as it's possible that the flame goes out. Even if you insist with the term "Law", you'd just face the problem of induction again. Both of these "issues" can be answered with the Neglected Alternative argument. It's common to not see the impact Hume's work have on Kant's, i'd say it is that much of an impact that it basically enables him to go on and develop TI.

This was great 👍

The problem with the continuity problem is it's supported by causation. For Kant, causation is a transcendental concept to UNDERSTAND what we have perceived and to make knowledge. Actually, it's into the subject, too.

Cause and effect perhaps need not be temporal except in the mind, but could still be real as an eternal “happening”.

great video!

The world beyond our perception or the veil of perception can be theorized if it is a fact that time and space are apriori intuitions. Which Kant proved to be the case. It wasn’t something he garnered from looking at the outside world, it was the opposite. Looking at internal facts surrounding our experience of space and time

The object the left guy made about idealism does work. According to general relativity, space time is always changing. We detected gravitational waves and observed gravitational lensing. If space changes shape while we are not looking, then how you explain it existing only in our minds?

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!

To help understand Kant then P D Ouspensky addresses this in his book Tertium Organum which is far easier to read and grasp than Kant's Critique of Pure Reason where he introduces Transcendental Logic. Ouspensky's examples of the various dimensions is interesting. He also mentions the 4 stages of consciousness from the ancient indian school vendantin which lists Tiyari (ecstasy), Deep sleep (wiithout Dreams), Sleep (dream State) and A waking state (our normal awake mode). We exist as part of a higher level (eg 4D) but are only able to experience a 3D world due to the limitations of our senses. What we see are only surfaces and a section of what in reality is multi dimensional which we perceive as Absurdities and Phenomena.The simplest analogy is Plato's allegory of the cave. If you can visualise yourself as the cave dwellor how would you react and how would see the world outside the cave. The culture shock would be intense, frightening, the stuff of nightmares, so you cannot or will be unable to pass over to another dimension(s) without being 'prepared' hence why all the ancients participated in rituals especially when folks were close to death. Our world is a construct (finite) but reality is infinite. Our life is just a section making birth and death the transitions, hence space and time are illusuary as there is only now.The big question is where do we go and from where. What are the forms and what if there are options what would they look like. Are we simply choosing vacation experiences or are we going through a school? Running Simulations? , and if we are reincarnating as some people theorise would you want to remember a past life especially if it was horrific? Have a nice day everyone, Enjoy life and try to be the best version of your self. Each day is a brand new canvas and never fear the end as it is only a transition to something new.

I read Kant on my own many years ago without really understanding him...this video has simply made me understand him more clearly...yes, I think the object in itself which we cannot know as we only know what appears to be to us, cannot exist without space in itself...so contrary to Kant, space and time exist in the physical world outside of and we have inner and outer sense a priori within our minds as well by which we intuit time and space...am I right?

Great video

The obviously stoned dude made a total turnaround later in the video, I'm impressed.

Nice little channel to stumble upon

great video, helped me out a lot. However, I did not understand justification of that space and time are human intuitions. You said because they are not thing in themselves and part of something else. Must they be like these not to be human intuitions?

loved it

Continuity is an aspect of our experience of whatever noumena is. If I stayed and watched the candle, in the end it would look the same as it would if I left and later came back to it. Cause and effect is how we experience things in themselves, but that doesn't mean that things in themselves are independent of what we experience as time. In other words, time is how we participate in their actual existence, and it's no surprise that there is consistency.

Transcendental didn't mean going beyond, as this video claims. The traditional word for that was transcendent. The best book on transcendental idealism is the book on Schopenhauer by the great Brian Magee. The first two chapters. Magee was also a writer of novels and poems and he can take you really far into philosophy. Magee also warned that no one really understood Kant. Magee was friends with Karl Popper and he wrote in his autobiography that Popper told him that even he (Popper) didn't understand Kant. Good look!

I'm not a philosophy expert or even a formal student... just an average person watching these videos trying to learn about these different philosophies. If I was to live my life as a transcendental idealist, what would it look like? I i.e. what is sleeping then? the will to get out of bed and go to work. How do I perceive my Job, family... By perception, I would also include, how would I be interacting with the space and objects around me?

Kant does not say that space and time do not exist outside of experience. He says that we cannot know for sure. Huge difference.

1:53 Subject and Object spreate is our basic knowing form , that's it is Idealism , The world as our representation and as ourselves, it's like when we look at ourself in the mirror.

Very impressive.

In a deterministic world, causes imply effects directly, and vice versa. In principle, effects don’t have to play out over time for them to be knowable. If you knew the exact position and momentum of every particle in the universe at one snapshot in time, and you had enough computational power, you could see what every other snapshot would have to be. Would this help the continuity problem?

Amazinggggggg thank youuuu

U guys saving me fr

How does transcendental idealism apply to the sense of touch?

Man, I love that coffee maker. Anybody have any idea what make it is? I'd like to buy one.

Does photography proves how the external world that it seems?

I like the fact this is just two geezers discussing philosophy. makes it far more accessible as you use ordinary language to describe your thoughts

What was this animated in? It's gorgeous.

We can not sense the time, all we sense is the changing of phenomenon. And we human invited an idea call time to measure the speed of how fast phenomenon changing. Right?

Can you please make a vedio on phenomenology...

Terence meckena when taking mushroom the mushroom told him” what u call man we call time” and Hindus knew it long before Kant

Great video, thank you, note to self(nts) watched all of it 12:43

Thus is fascinating! Thank you! I can't help but wonder: Is there a theory of causality which claims causality is also a result of perception? And, when we record the history of the world and when we discover laws of physics do they refer to the phenomena or the noumena?

So everyone can collectively be having different understandings of the same things visually ,and otherwise 🤔?

Staying along the lines of computers as an analogy we can see that the continuity issue isn’t actually an issue for Kant. Here’s the analogy: what we see on a computer screen is a phenomenon and the computing of ones and zeros is behind the scene noumena. A status bar showing the status of uploading a file would be analogous to a burning candle. Say you’re uploading a large file to your computer and you see the status bar moving on your screen. Say you turn off the monitor and wait ten minutes and turn it back on to see that the bar has moved. No issues with the situation IMO.

PERFECT

Regarding the continuity problem: i haven't read kant, but the explanation to this one is that time as we perceive it - a univrrsal, linear sequence of events - isn't actually what's happening. Which is actually correct, as per the theories of relativity. What we call time is just a product of our senses, but the fact that things take place based on cause-and-effect, is not. So basically, bro predicted the theory of relativity, at least going purely on what i understood as kant being presented as saying in this video lol

Kant is a brilliant

So could you say this theory presents that the mind creates graphics for the noumenal reality that make sense to the human mind?

Cause and effect happen with a positive continuity of time (time continuing from a known point in the past into the future). To say time exists independent of the mind is implying time is eternal or there is no "before time" and if this is the case, there can be no cause and effect as we get to present time by successive additions and cause and effect happen with time that continues from a possible point in the past. Time is best accounted for in reality with the velocity of celestial bodies (planetary oscillation) and the locomotion/action of sentient beings. This is to say cause and effect give time its seeming realness.

It would be better if you do your brilliant videos with subtitles..

Maybe the candle continues to burn down (despite time being only a mental concept) because time does not necessitate change or movement. Change or movement is the progression of what ever the material thing is from one form to another. To the object, it is immaterial how long it took to happen.

Kant's idealism collapses because he tries to make the subject/object distinction metaphysical which it is not- it's a human perspective. Within one reality...both the external world and our perceptions ( physical interactions ) are objects.

I personally don’t think there’s an issue with not seeing things in themselves and still pursuing science. Let’s take computers for example as an analogy. One’s and zero’s are the noumena behind the scenes. However most computer programmers (scientists by analogy) don’t program directly using ones and zeros. They use whatever programming software they chose (Java, C++, or whatever), which are analogous to phenomena. As long as we can program functional computer programs using these programing softwares, it doesn’t matter if we never actually see or deal with the ones or zeros.

Saying the time and space "stop existing" after we die is to say there is an after. Non existence has to exist never, and nowhere.

How can you say space is not part of objects, every object has its own space.

Phenomenal! Super easy to follow, and in a fun, engaging format too :) Thanks !!

How time dilation supported kant

Great video! I always knew Kant was somehow wrong , now I have arguments😂

If space does not exist external to the mind then the candle and ' I' cannot exist except in the mind. Since the mind is a product of the brain that requires space to exist then space must exist independently of the mind. If it does not we cannot exist and are figments of a non existence mind. Unless our mind is an ethereal product that has no material basis. Or are we imagining the existence of our own brain and body in a space that only exists in our mind. Is this then not just an absolute Idealism?

Tables and chairs don't necessarily exist in the external world. Only noumenon or the thing in itself exists. Our minds make the tables and chairs. He also wouldn't call them physical objects, or even objects at all. And I think kant uses transcendental deduction to arrive at the conclusion that noumenon logically exists, though we can say nothing about it.

Casualty is not a product of perception. Perception is a product of casualty.

The way I conceptualize kant's transedental idealism of space, is like in a game engine, where different objects are defined by a set of properties, but the game engine renders a 3d representation of of the data. In the real world of the source code, objects are actually only points that move around. But they are later rendered in 3d to us by the graphic systems. The object is probably sitting still in a memory die, with some values changing. But the 3d render there is movement and

Honestly I think the objections to this idea far outweigh the idea itself, especially in the modern era where chemistry can be measured at specific rates, regardless of observation, on end states only and reliably. (Sure, even these are subject to confidence intervals due to statistics) so it cannot be proven. (Which is ultimately the entire problem) the interface between realism and idealism relies on that confidence interval, it would take infinite measurements to confirm it.

One of my favorite philosophical channels. Honestly the idea of T Idealism remains me of Solipsism. They both sound interesting but kind of absurd

no space and time is not inside my mind, my mind is inside the mind of all space and time