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In philosophy, "pure reason" refers to the faculty that grasps a priori forms of knowledge, forming the basis of transcendental ideas. Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, proposed a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy, suggesting that the mind actively constitutes our experience of reality rather than passively receiving it.12

This involves innate mental structures like the forms of space and time, categories of understanding (such as substance and causality), and higher-level ideas of reason (like the self, the world, and God). These a priori elements, contributed by the mind, shape how we perceive and understand the world, meaning knowledge is partly a product of the knowing subject. Pure reason, in this context, is distinct from practical reason, which guides actions.23

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