(Kant);
 Much of transcendental thinking comes from German idealism and the writings of Immanuel Kant.
 philosophy emphasizing reasoning: a system of philosophy, especially that of Kant, that regards the processes of reasoning as the key to knowledge of reality
KANT AND THE SOLUTION
Kant starts by saying that all our knowledge begins with experience as it gives us "the raw material of our sense impressions." He therefore is in agreement with the empiricists. Saying that all knowledge begins with experience does not mean it all originates from experience. It must also be taken into account the contribution the mind makes to its knowledge of things, for it is an active participant in organizing and imposing form on the material it experiences.
The answer lied in assimilating both ideas. Any knowledge that we might possess or wish to express would need to be presented as statements whose truth or falsity could be evaluated. These he called propositions or judgments. They contain a subject, what is talked about, and a predicate, what is said about the subject. We have four types of these:
1. a priori - judgments we know are true apart from experience. They have universality and necessity, and are true everywhere at all times. An example is 5+2=7.
2. a posterior - derivable with the assistance of sense experience. For example, the sky is blue.
3. analytic - propositions in which the predicate is stated in the subject. An example is: A bachelor is an unmarried male; the predicate adds nothing to the subject.
4. synthetic - predicate is not identical with the subject. It tells us something new. For example, The house is burning.
From these four listed above, two distinctions may be inferred:
1. analytic a priori - statements that are universally true but are uninformative. For an example, A is A. A bald headed man is one who has no hair on his head.
2. synthetic a posteriori - one in which an empirical observation is recorded. It is informative but lacks universality and necessity. For example: "The grass is green." People in Arctic regions may never have seen grass.
These two propositions were the only two kinds we can have, as David Hume assumed, although he called them by different names. For example a priori propositions are relations of ideas in his system and tell us only about the interconnectedness of our ideas and do not increase our knowledge. Synthetic a posterior propositions are matters of fact in Hume's system and summarize what we have observed and cannot serve as predictions of future experience.
Kant, upon considering Hume's terms, now broached a third type of proposition, called a synthetic a priori proposition. This would be valuable since it would be universally true and, having important content to it, could serve as a premise for predictions about areas of natural events not yet observed or observable. The problem with this third type is in the synthetic element, being that the subject and predicate are two distinct notions. How can we say that they are necessarily connected in some way, so that "S is P' is true always. It doesn't arise for synthetic propositions but for synthetic a priori ones. Would we automatically assume that every time the subject "house" is mentioned the predicate "is burning" will follow?
Hume saw this problem limited to causation and it could be solved by denying its existence. The causal axiom is synthetic and they rest on experience so we cannot be sure of its universality. Kant, although believed the causal axiom was not an a posteriori, but an a priori truth, thereby making all events subject to it. He also realized Hume's concern was not limited to causation. The problem, as Kant saw it, was much wider and the causal axiom was an example of it. He realized that the true question was if we could really have this type of knowledge.
Kant set out in the last three sections of the Critique to prove this:
• Transcendental Aesthetic - deals with the faculty of sensibility and demonstrates how synthetic a priori propositions are possible in math.
• Transcendental Analytic - deals with the faculty of understanding and shows how these principles are possible in natural science.
• Transcendental Dialectic - deals with the faculty of reason and shows how and why these propositions offered by it and claims made by traditional metaphysics are possible.