There are several different ways to read the sentence that you quote from Kant: 1. The way that we experience things as being is totally unlike the way things really are. 2. The way that we experience things as being is somewhat different from the way things really are. 3. The way that we experience things as being is a product of the way things really are and the way we are -- factors that cannot be understood in isolation. 4. There are no things in themselves , just things in our experience. It is only the first reading that leaves reality "forever beyond our knowledge", as you say. Reading #2 allows us partial knowledge of things in themselves, and reading #3 grants us a modified knowledge of things in themselves. Reading #4 dismisses the very possibility of things that are beyond the reach of experience. When we experience ourselves or objects as "individuals", we make distinctions between people or objects that may not accurately represent the world as it is...

It is common to interpret Kant as insisting that the objects we observe in space and time exist independently of any particular observation we make of them,but also insisting that space and time are forms that we impose on our experience rather than characteristics of reality as it exists in itself. Likewise, it is common to read Kant as insisting that causal relations exist independently of any particular observation we may make, but also insisting that causal ordering is something that we impose on our experience rather than something that is present in reality in itself. These contrasting claims are reflected in Kant's famous distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal, and in his endorsement of empirical realism and transcendental idealism. Whether Kant's position is a consistent position is a topic of much dispute. It is common to invoke the image of colored glasses to explain how he can insist that what we see is independent of ourselves but how we see it depends on...

First, it should be noted that not all astrophysicists agree that time and space began with the Big Bang. There may be no meaningful way to measure or study space and time before the Big Bang, but that does not necessarily mean that there is no such thing. Scientists can agree on empirical findings and on the theories that best predict further findings without agreeing about the nature of the reality that underlies those findings. (This is especially clear in the case of Quantum Mechanics, where several competing interpretations have scientific adherents.) Kant claimed that an entirely empty space, and an entirely empty time, are perfectly conceivable. So if the reason behind believing that space and time began with the Big Bang is the belief that the intelligibility of space and time depend on the presence of objects in space and time, he would disagree. Indeed, this view is the explicit target of several of his arguments in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason. On...