A 21st Century Investigation of the Conditions of All Possible Experience?

I remember reading some research on creativity a several years ago, a topic I'm interested in and fascinated by for a variety of reasons, and being struck by one of the claims. Repeatedly, researchers discussed and empirically studied the representations of aliens and mythical creatures by writers and artists in a variety of genres (science fiction, fantasy, comic books, etc.). They concluded that these representations shared several features, one of which was bilateral symmetry, and argued that this is because our creativity is limited by our experience.

After spending some time with the creativity literature and feeling like I had a good grasp of it, I brought it up at a party attended by several biologists. A couple overheard what I was saying, and took issue with it. Specifically, when I brought up the point about bilateral symmetry, they both began to vehemently disagree with me.. They went on and on about how what I was describing wasn't a limit of creativity, it was a limit of biology, and provided me with a laundry list of reasons why extraterrestrial creatures were likely to exhibit bilateral symmetry. At the time I thought they had simply missed the point, but I'm no longer so sure.

In my perhaps warped mind, this discussion got me thinking about Kant. Ever since I had taken a course on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I had been skeptical of Kant's stated goal of providing the necessary conditions for all possible experience. I, influenced heavily by the professor of course, had interpreted this to mean not simply human experience, but the experience of any experiencing being, which would include extraterrestrial beings. How could it be possible, I thought, to make an argument which, though transcendental, must be based on at least introspective evaluations of human (or a human's) experience, and have it apply to all possible experiencing beings? This seemed to me patently absurd.

My skepticism of Kant's project was bolstered by my affinity with the ecological psychology of J.J. Gibson and the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Both thinkers were Kantians of sorts, as is just about anyone who studies the mind in the 20th or 21st century, but where they differed from Kant, or at least, where I saw them differing from Kant, was in the role that our own concerns, needs, or goals, and bodies played in determining the nature of our experience, or our experience of nature. For them, as well as the psychologists and philosophers who were influenced by them (and many of their predecessors as well), we are embodied, situated creatures, and the conditions of our experience are necessarily wrapped up in that embodiment and situatedness.

To me, this seemed like a direct challenge to the Kantian project. If our experience is embodied and situated, how can we possibly extract anything universal from it? Wouldn't the conditions of possible experience for differently embodied and situated creatures necessarily be different? The two exceptions, of course, would be embodiment and situatedness. In a way, these are the Gibsonian and Merleau-Pontyan universal conditions for all experience. But any transcendental argument about the conditions of all possible experience beyond that would be impossible, right?

This is where my myopia took me, until that conversation with the two biologists. After that conversation, I realized that something like the Kantian project might be possible if nature limits the possibilities of embodiment and situatedness. That is, with a firm grasp of the ways in which the facts of the physical universe limit our embodiment (e.g., biasing our body plans towards bilateral symmetry, particularly as organisms become more complex), we might be able to suss out a basic set of necessary conditions for possible experience that would apply to all possible experiencing beings in the physical universe.

At the very least, this seems like an interesting line of research, and one that, in true Merleau-Pontyan fashion, would have to rely heavily on philosophical reasoning and empirical science. What would be needed would be a Kantian transcendental argument for the 21st century, utilizing biology, physics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. This would, of course, be a massive undertaking, a sort of science (in the old sense of Wissenschaft) in and of itself, rather than the grand system-making of one person, but it seems possible. Or does it? What do you think?