Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant is an 18th- century German philosopher. He made a significant amount of contributions to many branches of philosophy. Two of his main ideas and theories include Critique of Pure Reason and Transcendental Idealism. These two ideas contribute a great base of knowledge pertaining to perceptions. Perception is the ability to gather information via the senses. The Critique of Pure Reason theory is what Kant likes to describe as an exploration of the limitations and scope of human knowledge. He argues that our knowledge as humans is shaped by sensory experiences and innate concepts. Innate concepts are inborn qualities of a human mind. He explains that we can know how things appear to us, but we as humans cannot know things in themselves. Things in themselves as things that do not exist in time and do not enter into causal relations. For a better example, if one were to sit outside on the ground alone in silence and heard an extremely loud bang from the distance, one would immediately try to explain to themselves what the bang was. Considering I used a loud bang as an example, one would most likely assume that it was an explosion, firework, gunshot, or maybe even a plane crash. The moral of this example is that almost anything someone could imagine, is a worldly perception, and not what it truly is. The second theory mentioned above, Transcendental Idealism, is extremely similar to the previously mentioned idea. Kant explains that this idea helps describe how the mind actively structures experiences. For example, if one were to see a tattoo of a devil face on someone's body, they are more than likely to immediately think of evil and that the person with the tattoo does not believe in Christ. The face that humans decided to mold and describe the so-called devil can make us think of immense lore of the subject of a perception. When August in most parts of the United States comes around, Walmart will hang pencil and backpack cut outs from the ceiling, allowing for humans to conclude that there are school supplies being sold near that area. Everything humans physically see allows them to make a conclusion for it to make sense in their brain.