ar on the situation. Kant argued that causation and a number of other basic ideas--time and space, for instance--are hardwired, as it were, into our minds. Anytime we try to understand what we see, we cannot help but think in terms of causes and effects. Kant's argument with Hume may seem like hairsplitting, but it has huge implications. If our picture of the world is structured by concepts that are hardwired into our minds, then we can't know anything about how the world "really" is. The world we know about is developed by combining sensory data ("appearances" or "phenomena," as Kant called them) with fundamental concepts of reason (causation, etc.). We don't know anything about the "things-in- themselves" from which sensory data emanates. This recognition that our understanding of the world may have as much to do with our minds as with the world has been called a "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy--a change in perspective as significant to philosophy as Copernicus' recognition that the earth is not the center of the universe. Kant's insights posed a severe challenge to many earlier ideas. Before Kant, for instance, many philosophers offered "proofs" of the existence of God. One argument made was that there must be a "first cause" for the universe. Kant pointed out that we can either imagine a world in which some divine being set the universe in motion, causing all later events; or we can imagine a universe that is an infinite series of causes and effects extending endlessly into the past and future. But since causation is an idea that comes from our minds and not from the world, we cannot know whether there "really" are causes and effects in the world--let alone whether there was a "first cause" that caused all later events. The question of whether there "must" be a first cause for the universe is irrelevant, because it is really a question about how we understand the world, not a question about the world itself. ...
