apriori rights.
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The terms a priori ("from the former") and a posteriori ("from the
latter") are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types
of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or
justification is independent of experience (for example 'All bachelors
are unmarried'); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on
experience or empirical evidence (for example 'Some bachelors are very
happy'). A priori justification makes reference to experience; but the
issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in
questionâ€"what justifies or grounds one's belief in it. Galen
Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see
that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off
your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical
world. You don't have to do any science."[1] There are many points of
view on these two types of assertion, and their relationship is one of
the oldest problems in modern philosophy.
See also the related distinctions: deductive/inductive,
analytic/synthetic, necessary/contingent.
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Use of the terms, 1.2 The intuitive distinction
2 History of use
2.1 Early uses, 2.2 Immanuel Kant
3 Analyticity and necessity
3.1 Relation to the analytic-synthetic, 3.2 Relation to the
necessary/contingent
4 Notes
5 References and further reading
6 External links
[edit] Introduction
[edit] Use of the terms
The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used in philosophy to
distinguish two different types of knowledge, justification, or
argument: 'a priori knowledge' is known independently of experience, and
'a posteriori knowledge' is proven through experience. Thus, they are
primarily used as adjectives to modify the noun "knowledge", or taken to
be compound nouns that refer to types of knowledge (for example, "a
priori knowledge"). However, "a priori" is sometimes used as an
adjective to modify other nouns, such as "truth". Additionally,
philosophers often modify this use. For example, "apriority" and
"aprioricity" are sometimes used as nouns to refer (approximately) to
the quality of being a priori."
[edit] The intuitive distinction
Although definitions and use of the terms have varied in the history of
philosophy, they have consistently labelled two separate epistemological
notions. The intuitive distinction between a priori and a posteriori
knowledge is best seen in examples. To borrow from Jerry Fodor (2004),
take, for example, the proposition expressed by the sentence, "George V
reigned from 1910 to 1936." This is something (if true) that one must
come to know a posteriori, because it expresses an empirical fact
unknowable by reason alone. By contrast, consider the proposition, "If
George V reigned at all, then he reigned for at least a day." This is
something that one knows a priori, because it expresses a statement that
one can derive by reason alone.
[edit] History of use
[edit] Early uses
The phrases "a priori" and "a posteriori" are Latin for "from what comes
before" and "from what comes later" (or, less literally, "before
experience" and "after experience"). An early philosophical use of what
might be considered a notion of a priori knowledge (though not called by
that name) is Plato's theory of recollection, related in the dialogue
Meno (380 B.C.), according to which something like a priori knowledge is
knowledge inherent, intrinsic in the human mind.
[edit] Immanuel Kant
Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1781) advocated a
blend of rationalist and empiricist theories. Kant states, "although all
our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises
from experience"[2] According to Kant, a priori knowledge is
transcendental, or based on the form of all possible experience, while a
posteriori knowledge is empirical, based on the content of experience.
Kant states, "... it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a
compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which
the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions
giving merely the occasion)."[2] Thus, unlike the empiricists, Kant
thinks that a priori knowledge is independent of the content of
experience; moreover, unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that a priori
knowledge, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any
empirical content, is knowledge limited to the deduction of the
conditions of possible experience. These a priori, or transcendental
conditions, are seated in one's cognitive faculties, and are not
provided by experience in general or any experience in particular. Kant
nominated and explored the possibility of a transcendental logic with
which to consider the deduction of the a priori in its pure form.
Concepts such as time and cause are counted among the list of pure a
priori forms. Kant reasoned that the pure a priori forms are established
via his transcendental aesthetic and transcendental logic. He claimed
that the human subject would not have the kind of experience that it has
were these a priori forms not in some way constitutive of him as a human
subject. For instance, he would not experience the world as an orderly,
rule-governed place unless time and cause were operative in his
cognitive faculties. The claim is more formally known as Kant's
transcendental deduction and it is the central argument of his major
work, the Critique of Pure Reason. The transcendental deduction does not
avoid the fact or objectivity of time and cause, but does, in its
consideration of a possible logic of the a priori, attempt to make the
case for the fact of subjectivity, what constitutes subjectivity and
what relation it holds with objectivity and the empirical.
[edit] Analyticity and necessity
[edit] Relation to the analytic-synthetic
For more details on this topic, see Analytic-synthetic distinction.
Several philosophers reacting to Kant sought to explain a priori
knowledge without appealing to, as Paul Boghossian explains, "a special
faculty...that has never been described in satisfactory terms."[3] One
theory, popular among the logical positivists of the early twentieth
century, is what Boghossian calls the "analytic explanation of the a
priori."[3] The distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions
was first introduced by Kant. While Kant's original distinction was
primarily drawn in terms of conceptual containment, the contemporary
version of the distinction primarily involves, as Quine put it, the
notions of "true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact."[4]
Analytic propositions are thought to be true in virtue of their meaning
alone, while a priori synthetic propositions are thought to be true in
virtue of their meaning and certain facts about the world. According to
the analytic explanation of the a priori, all a priori knowledge is
analytic; so a priori knowledge need not require a special faculty of
pure intuition, since it can be accounted for simply by one's ability to
understand the meaning of the proposition in question. In short,
proponents of this explanation claimed to have reduced a dubious
metaphysical faculty of pure reason to a legitimate linguistic notion of
analyticity.
However, the analytic explanation of a priori knowledge has undergone
several criticisms. Most notably, the American philosopher W. V. O.
Quine (1951) argued that the analytic-synthetic distinction is
illegitimate (see Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic
distinction). Quine states: "But for all its a priori reasonableness, a
boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been
drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an
unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith."[5]
While the soundness of Quine's critique is highly disputed, it had a
powerful effect on the project of explaining the a priori in terms of
the analytic.
[edit] Relation to the necessary/contingent
The metaphysical distinction between necessary and contingent truths has
also been related to a priori and a posteriori knowledge. A proposition
that is necessarily true is one whose negation is self-contradictory
(thus, it is said to be true in every possible world). Consider the
proposition that all bachelors are unmarried. Theoretically, its
negation, the proposition that some bachelors are married, is
incoherent, because the concept of being unmarried (or the meaning of
the word "unmarried") is part of the concept of being a bachelor (or
part of the definition of the word "bachelor"). To the extent that
contradictions are impossible, self-contradictory propositions are
necessarily false, because it is impossible for them to be true. Thus,
the negation of a self-contradictory proposition is supposed to be
necessarily true. By contrast, a proposition that is contingently true
is one whose negation is not self-contradictory (thus, it is said that
it is not true in every possible world). As Jason Baehr states, it seems
plausible that all necessary propositions are known a priori, because
"[s]ense experience can tell us only about the actual world and hence
about what is the case; it can say nothing about what must or must not
be the case."[6]
Following Kant, some philosophers have considered the relationship
between aprioricity, analyticity, and necessity to be extremely close.
According to Jerry Fodor, "Positivism, in particular, took it for
granted that a priori truths must be necessary...."[7] However, since
Kant, the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions had
slightly changed. Analytic propositions were largely taken to be "true
by virtue of meanings and independently of fact",[8] while synthetic
propositions were notâ€"one must conduct some sort of empirical
investigation, looking to the world, to determine the truth-value of
synthetic propositions.
Aprioricity, analyticity, and necessity have since been more clearly
separated from each other. The American philosopher Saul Kripke (1972),
for example, provided strong arguments against this position. Kripke
argued that there are necessary a posteriori truths, such as the
proposition that water is H2O (if it is true). According to Kripke, this
statement is necessarily true (since water and H2O are the same thing,
they are identical in every possible world, and truths of identity are
logically necessary) and a posteriori (since it is known only through
empirical investigation). Following such considerations of Kripke and
others (such as Hilary Putnam), philosophers tend to distinguish more
clearly the notion of aprioricity from that of necessity and
analyticity.
Kripke's definitions of these terms, however, diverge in subtle ways
from those of Kant. Taking these differences into account, Kripke's
controversial analysis of naming as contingent and a priori would best
fit into Kant's epistemological framework by calling it "analytic a
posteriori".[9]
Thus, the relationship between aprioricity, necessity, and analyticity
is not easy to discern. However, most philosophers at least seem to
agree that while the various distinctions may overlap, the notions are
clearly not identical: the a priori/a posteriori distinction is
epistemological, the analytic/synthetic distinction is linguistic, and
the necessary/contingent distinction is metaphysical.[10]
[edit] Notes
^ (Sommers, 2003)[page needed]
^ a b Kant (1781), introduction, §I.
^ a b Boghossian (1996), p. 363.
^ Quine (1951), p. 21.
^ Quine (1951), p. 34.
^ Baehr (2006), §3.
^ Fodor (1998), p. 86.
^ Quine (1951), §1.
^ Stephen Palmquist, "A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (II) Naming,
Necessity and the Analytic A Posteriori", The Review of Metaphysics 41:2
(December 1987), pp.255-282. See also "A Priori Knowledge in
Perspective: (I) Mathematics, Method and Pure Intuition", The Review of
Metaphysics 41:1 (September 1987), pp.3-22. In this pair of articles,
Palmquist demonstrates that the context often determines how a
particular proposition should be classified. A proposition that is
synthetic a posteriori in one context might be analytic a priori in
another.
^ See Baehr (2006), §2 & §3.
[edit] References and further reading
Baehr, Jason. (2006). "A Priori and A Posteriori," Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy.
Boghossian, Paul. (1997). "Analyticity Reconsidered," Nous, vol. 30, no.
3, pp. 360â€"391.
Boghossian, P. & Peacocke, C., eds. (2000). New Essays on the A Priori,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Descartes, René. (1641). "Meditations on First Philosophy". In
Cottingham, et al. (eds.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,
Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Fodor, Jerry. (1998). Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong, New
York: Oxford University Press.
Fodor, Jerry. (2004). "Water's water everywhere", London Review of
Books, Vol. 26, No. 20, dated 21 October 2004.
Greenberg, Robert. "Kant's Theory of A Priori Knowledge", Penn State
Press, 2001 ISBN 0-271-02083-0
Heisenberg, Werner. (1958). "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in
Modern Science", pp. 76â€"92. New York: Harper & Row.
Hume, David. (1777). An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,
Nidditch, P. N. (ed.), 3rd. ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Jenkins, C. S. (2008). A Priori Knowledge: Debates and Developments, in
Philosophy Compass 3.
Kant, Immanuel. (1781). Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith
(London: Macmillan, 1929). Online text
Kant, Immanuel. (1783). Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, Paul
Carus (trans.). Online text
Kripke, Saul. (1972). "Naming and Necessity", in Semantics of Natural
Language, edited by D. Davidson and G. Harman, Boston: Reidel.
(Reprinted in 1980 as Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.)
Leibniz, Gottfried. (1714). Monadology, in Philosophical Essays, edited
and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, Indianapolis: Hackett,
1989.
Locke, John. (1689). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Prometheus
Books.
Palmquist, Stephen. (1987). "Knowledge and Experience - An Examination
of the Four Reflective 'Perspectives' in Kant's Critical Philosophy",
Kant-Studien 78:2, pp. 170â€"200; revised and reprinted as Chapter
IV in Kant's System of Perspectives: An architectonic interpretation of
the Critical philosophy. University Press of America, 1993.
Plato. (380 B.C.). Meno, in Plato: Complete Works, Cooper, J. M. (ed.),
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.
Sommers, Tamler: "The buck stopsâ€"where? Living without ultimate
responsibility" (The Believer, March 2003).
Quine, W. V. O. (1951). "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", The Philosophical
Review, Vol. 60, pp. 20â€"43. (Reprinted in Quine's From a Logical
Point of View, Harvard University Press, 1953.)
[edit] External links
Philosophy portal
"A Priori and A Posteriori" - an article by Jason Baehr in the Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
A priori / a posteriori - in the Philosophical Dictionary online.
"Rationalism vs. Empiricism" - an article by Peter Markie in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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