Transcendental idealism
Transcendental Idealism, also called formalistic idealism, is a term applied to the epistemology of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who held that the human self, or transcendental ego, constructs knowledge out of sense impressions and from universal concepts called categories that it imposes upon them. Kant's transcendentalism is set in contrast to those of two of his predecessors—the problematic idealism.
Definition
Everything known by humans within the limits of time and space, including that which was experienced by us, is nothing but representations of beings or forms that are ideals within our minds. All of these forms are within our minds from the first moment, meaning we do not have to experience the object to know its form. This sort of knowledge, when defined within space and time are empirical in base but were known via priori. However, Priori also applies to things not within space and time even though we cannot have knowledge of them through posteriori; therefore, knowledge of the forms not based in time and space is outside of the empirical. Transcendental idealism is the knowledge of the forms outside of the empirical – transcendental because it is not a reflection but the creation of the total and idealistic because it is not knowable through posteriori, using empirical knowledge, but only through the priori.
Kant referred to these forms, which we do not experience directly, as noumenon. Our mental perception of 'in and of themself' object is called phenomenon. Kant's addition to the idea that we do not see objects in and of themselves (e.g. we see an object representation as light energy reflected) is that there are categories of thought that act upon these sensory inputs that are a priori (innate within the mind). These categories of thought are cause/effect, all & everything, length, width, depth, time, numbers and others.
See also
