Does the mind give form to experience?
On the axis: Source of knowledge · the frames of experience
What if the mind did not merely receive the world but gave it form? Space, time, causality would then be less things observed than frames we impose on every possible experience.
Justification
The dispute between and is insoluble so long as one term is asked to carry everything: experience alone never yields necessity ('s objection about causation), reason alone runs idle. Kant's answer is the synthetic a priori judgment: there are a priori forms of sensibility and understanding that structure any possible experience, so that knowledge begins with experience without deriving wholly from it. This is the Copernican turn applied to knowledge, and the reason the axis settles at the centre.
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.Critique of Pure Reason, A51/B75
Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction · Critique of Pure Reason, A51/B75
Anchors: Kant