Research in artificial intelli-gence, artificial life and cogni-tive science has not yet provided answers to any of the most perplexing questions about the mind, such as the nature of consciousness or of the self; in this article the authors make a suggestion for a new approach. They begin by setting their project in the broader cognitive science context and argue that little recent research adequately addresses the question of what are the necessary requirements for conscious experience to be possible. Kant addresses this question in his transcendental psychology, and although Kant's work is now over 200 years old the authors believe his approach is worthy of re-examination in the current debate about the mind.