Against Norton's claim that all thought experiments can be reduced to explicit arguments, I defend Brown's position that certain thought experiments yield a priori knowledge. They do this, I argue, not by allowing us to perceive “Platonic universals” (Brown), even though they may contain non-propositional components that are epistemically indispensable, but by helping to identify certain tacit presuppositions or “natural interpretations” (Feyerabend's term) that lead to a contradiction when the phenomenon is described in terms of them, and by suggesting a (...) new natural interpretation in terms of which the phenomenon can be redescribed free of contradiction. (shrink)

I reconstruct and critique two arguments Laurence BonJour has recently offered against skepticism about the a priori. While the arguments may provide anti-skeptical, internalist foundationalists with reason to accept the a priori, I show that neither argument provides sufficient reason for believing the more general conclusion that there is no rational alternative to accepting the a priori.

A stellar line-up of leading philosophers from around the world offer new treatments of a topic which has long been central to philosophical debate, and in which there has recently been a surge of interest. The a priori is the category of knowledge that is supposed to be independent of experience. The contributors offer a variety of approaches to the a priori and examine its role in different areas of philosophical inquiry. The editors' introduction offers an ideal way into the (...) discussions. (shrink)

The view that logic is true independently of a subject matter is criticized—enlarging on Quine's criticisms and adding further ones. It is then argued apriori that full reflective understanding of logic and deductive reasoning requires substantial commitment to mathematical entities. It is emphasized that the objectively apriori connections between deductive reasoning and commitment to mathematics need not be accepted by or even comprehensible to a given deductive reasoner. The relevant connections emerged only slowly in the history of logic. But they (...) can be recognized retrospectively as implicit in logic and deductive reasoning. The paper concludes with discussion of the relevance of its main argument to Kant's question—how is apriori knowledge of a subject matter possible? (shrink)

This paper deals with the question whether existence claims may be supported in an a priori manner. I examine a particular case in point, namely the argument for the existence of so-called logical atoms to be found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Although I find it wanting, I argue that more general reflections on the notion of existence allow us to straightforwardly answer our initial question in the affirmative.

A number of philosophers, from Thomas Reid1 through C. A. J. Coady2, have argued that one is justified in relying on the testimony of others, and furthermore, that this should be taken as a basic epistemic presumption. If such a general presumption were not ultimately dependent on evidence for the reliability of other people, the ground for this presumption would be a priori. Such a presumption would then have a status like that which Roderick Chisholm claims for the epistemic principle (...) that we are justified in believing what our senses tell us. (shrink)

Suppose that it is necessary that if one believes that the F is F if any unique thing is, one believes of the F, if there is one, that it is F if any unique thing is. I argue that it follows (in all but a few cases) that it is also necessary that if one knows a priori that the F is F if any unique thing is, one knows a priori of the F, if there is one, that (...) it is F if any unique thing is. I claim that because of this, a priori knowledge of de re propositions, including contingent de re propositions, is a relatively common phenomenon. However, because attributions of belief and knowledge are context-sensitive, the question whether it possible to know a priori of a given object that it is F if anything is will typically have different answers in different contexts. (shrink)

This volume collects four published articles by the late Tamara Horowitz and two unpublished papers on decision theory: "Making Rational Decisions When Preferences Cycle" and the monograph-length "The Backtracking Fallacy." An introduction is provided by editor Joseph Camp. Horowitz preferred to recognize the diversity of rationality, both practical and theoretical rationality. She resisted the temptation to accept simple theories of rationality that are quick to characterize ordinary reasoning as fallacious. This broadly humanist approach to philosophy is exemplified by the articles (...) in this collection. As just one example, in "The Backtracking Fallacy," she argues that there are policies for decision-making a person may adopt if the person prefers to do so, but need not adopt. A person who employs such a policy no longer can regard standard expected utility theory as exceptionless, thereby sacrificing theoretical simplicity. But it is a mistake, Horowitz argues, to preserve theoretical simplicity by falsifying the decision making methods real people really use. (shrink)

What I wish to consider here is how understanding something is related to the justification of beliefs about what it means. Suppose, for instance, that S understands the name “Clinton” and has a justified belief that it names Clinton. How is S’s understanding related to that belief’s justification? Or suppose that S understands the sentence “Clinton is President”, or Jones’ assertive utterance of it, and has a justified belief that that sentence expresses the proposition that Clinton is President, or that (...) Jones said that Clinton is President. How is S’s understanding related to the justifications of these beliefs? (shrink)

In this paper I claim that Quinean naturalist accounts of science, that deny that there are any a priori statements in scientific frameworks, cannot account for the foundational role of certain classes of statements in scientific practice. In this I follow Michael Friedman who claims that certain a priori statements must be presupposed in order to formulate empirical hypotheses. I also show that Friedman's account, in spite of his claims to the contrary, is compatible with a type of non-Quinean naturalism (...) that I sketch. Finally I also show that Friedman's account needs amending because it cannot provide a rational account of theory change. I accomplish this by arguing for a structural realist view of theory change. I show how this view fits well with an account like Friedman's and helps it deal with the problem of theory change and in retaining its superiority over Quinean naturalism. (shrink)

The paper argues that the use of epistemic terms, prominently “… knows” and even “… knows a priori/a posteriori” is context-sensitive along several dimensions. Besides the best known dimension of quality of evidence (lower quality for less demanding context, and higher one for more demanding), there is a dimension of depth (shallow justification for superficial evaluation, and deeper justification for deeper probing evaluation contexts). This claim is illustrated by context-dependent ascription of apriority and aposteriority. The argument proposed here focuses upon (...) the status of propositions that are analytic in empirical concepts (like “Whales are animals”). It is a commonplace in epistemology that any analytic proposition (including e-analytic ones) is a priori. The paper claims that propositions analyzing empirical concepts are an interesting counterexample. It develops the following argument: Many such propositions have empirical counterparts that are expressed by the same form-of-words. (E.g., the form of words “Whales are mammals” can express both an e-analytic proposition and an empirical statement.) They normally derive from their empirical counterparts. Beliefs in such propositions, can be explicitly justified either a priori, by pointing out their conceptual, analytic status, or by reverting to their empirical counterparts. In contexts of very superficial evaluation, one may justify such an analytic belief in the first, conceptual way. In most contexts a belief in a proposition analyzing an empirical concept is being justified by appeal to its empirical counterparts. The empirical justification is normally taken as being ultimate. Empirical counterparts are derivationally deeper than the corresponding analytic propositions, and empirical justification is deeper than a priori one as well. Therefore, propositions analyzing empirical concepts are deeply a posteriori and superficially a priori. (shrink)

Book Information New Essays on the A Priori. Edited by Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2000. Pp. xi + 478. £15.99.

The Marburg neo-Kantians argue that Hermann von Helmholtz’s empiricist account of the a priori does not account for certain knowledge, since it is based on a psychological phenomenon, trust in the regularities of nature. They argue that Helmholtz’s account raises the ‘problem of validity’ (Gültigkeitsproblem): how to establish a warranted claim that observed regularities are based on actual relations. I reconstruct Heinrich Hertz’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Bild theoretic answer to the problem of validity: that scientists and philosophers can depict the (...) necessary a priori constraints on states of affairs in a given system, and can establish whether these relations are actual relations in nature. The analysis of necessity within a system is a lasting contribution of the Bild theory. However, Hertz and Wittgenstein argue that the logical and mathematical sentences of a Bild are rules, tools for constructing relations, and the rules themselves are meaningless outside the theory. Carnap revises the argument for validity by attempting to give semantic rules for translation between frameworks. Russell and Quine object that pragmatics better accounts for the role of a priori reasoning in translating between frameworks. The conclusion of the tale, then, is a partial vindication of Helmholtz’s original account. (shrink)

Many philosophers ponder the question of the a priori status of logical rules like modus ponens. In this paper I argue that the way in which such questions are usually posed is misguided. I argue that to accept modus ponens is nothing else than to have an implication; hence that to ask how do we know that implication obeys modus ponens does not make sense. To ask whether modus ponens is a priori is to ask whether having implication is a (...) priori. I argue that as one is not born with a language (but perhaps only with a predisposition to acquire a certain kind of language, namely one posessing logical vocabulary and hence displaying logical structure), logical rules can be a priori only in the sense that we tend to acquire language governed by such rules. (shrink)

The seal of the a priori is imprinted on the reception of Kant's philosophy. Piaget's epistemological argumentation seems to ascribe knowledge a more fruitful constructiveness than Kant, seeing the a priori as rooted in unvarying reason. Yet, it seems, he failed to recognize the complexity of Kant's theory, which does not always follow a quid iuris line. Moments of experience, analysis and self-observation played more than a marginal role in his discovery of the a priori. Indeed, Kant himself raises the (...) question of ontogenetic category assimilation in a review which pre-empts Piaget, borrowing the category of `original acquisition' from the doctrine of the laws of natural right. And although Kant should not be elevated to the harbinger of the knowledge on development issues delivered thus far by the history of science and experiments, he did recognize the temporal reference of their categories in principle without resolving their validity in psychogenetic terms. Key Words: a priori • categories • genetic epistemology • Geneva School • neo-Kantianism • original acquisition • Jean Piaget • psychogenesis • self-observation. (shrink)

The paper raises two questions, which seem central to understanding Kant's transcendental epistemology in the first Critique. First, Kant claims that the conditions for the possibility of experience are also conditions for the possibility of the objects of experience (A158/B197). Here the notion of an object is not conceived from the divine standpoint ('the view from nowhere') and is in some sense relativized to experience. But in what sense? Is the notion of an object relativized to one specific kind of (...) experience, human experience? Or is it relativized only to any possible experience? Second, in what sense is Kant's transcendental epistemology a priori? Is it a priori in the strong sense that its starting-point - the notion of experience in the question 'How is experience possible?' - is a priori? Or is it a priori only in the weak sense that, while the notion of experience is obtained empirically, a priori reasoning is required to establish how experience is possible? It has recently been argued (by Patricia Kitcher, Kant's Transcendental Psychology) that (a) the results that Kant wants to establish transcenden-tally about objects are relative to one specific kind of experience, human experience, and (b) Kant's transcendental epistemology is a priori only in the weak sense that the reasoning is a priori, while the starting-point is empirical. These claims are indeed crucial to Kitcher's overall aim of naturalizing Kant's transcendental epistemology. The aim of the paper is to resist both claims. I argue that Kant's notion of an object of experience is the notion of an object of any possible experience, not the notion of an object of one specific kind of experience, human experience. It follows, I argue, that Kant's transcendental epistemology is a priori in the strong sense that its starting-point is a priori. If we deny strong apriority, we fail to account for Kant's move from the nature of experience to the nature of empirical reality: empirical reality as such, not empirical reality as experienced by a particular variety of creatures capable of experience. The upshot is that, for better or worse, Kant's transcendental epistemology cannot be naturalized. (shrink)

The notion of “de re belief” has been used in a variety of ways. On the surface, it looks like all theorists are working with roughly the same idea, but on critical inspection I think that unity proves illusory.

In section III of Pryor 2006a, I argued against the view that the mere fact that a thought- type is hyper-reliable directly gives one justification to believe a thought of that type. A close alternative says that our merely appreciating that the thought-type is hyper-reliable directly gives us that justification.

A thumbnail sketch of the philosophical thinking about the a priori would surely include that it has been dominated by two major approaches: the Kantian absolute conception of it and the Millian-Quinean absolute rejection of it (section 2). Yet, one can find in the literature claims about the existence of a ›functional a priori‹, a ›relative a priori‹, a ›relativised a priori‹ and suchlike. They are all meant to carve a space between the two extremes. An important thought behind the (...) search for a middle ground is that the supposed coincidence between the constitutive and the unrevisable is wrong. The entitlement to accept a principle as being constitutive of experience prior to any empirical justification of it is compatible with an entitlement to revise or abandon such a principle on empirical grounds. If a priori principles are meant to be independent of experience, how should this claim of independence be understood so that room is left for the possibility that a principle is both independent of experience and revisable on empirical grounds (section 3)? A straightforward and natural way to approach this issue is to think of constitutive principles along the lines of Poincaréan conventions, which can be seen as delineating a new sense of the a priori – the conventional a priori principles. These are substantive principles that are constitutive of theoretical frameworks – in the sense that they define (or constitute) the object of knowledge – without being either synthetic a priori or empirical generalisations. Still, their negation is conceivable and they are revisable on empirical grounds (section 4). (shrink)

Philosophers love a priori knowledge: we delight in truths that can be known from the comfort of our armchairs, without the need to venture out in the world for confirmation. This is due not to laziness, but to two different considerations. First, it seems that many philosophical issues aren’t settled by our experience of the world — the nature of morality; the way concepts pick out objects; the structure of our experience of the world in which we find ourselves — (...) these issues seem to be decided not on the basis of our experience, but in some manner by things prior to (or independently of) that experience. Second, even when we are deeply interested in how our experience lends credence to our claims about the world, the matter remains of the remainder: we learn more about how experience contributes to knowledge when we see what knowledge is available independent of that experience. (shrink)

Quine’s publication in 1951 of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” was a watershed event in 20th century philosophy. In that essay, Quine sought to demolish the concepts of analyticity and a priority; he also sketched a positive proposal of his own -- epistemological holism. There can be little doubt that philosophy changed as a result of Quine’s work. The question I want to address here is whether it should have. My goal is not to argue for a return to the halcyon (...) days of the logical empiricists. Rather, I want to take stock. Now, almost fifty years after the publication of “Two Dogmas,” what view should we take of analyticity, the a priori, and epistemological holism, and of what Quine said about these topics? (shrink)

Recent defenses of a priori knowledge can be applied to the idea of conventions in science in order to indicate one important sense in which conventionalism is correctsome elements of physical theory have a unique epistemological status as a functionally a priori part of our physical theory. I will argue that the former a priori should be treated as empirical in a very abstract sense, but still conventional. Though actually coming closer to the Quinean position than recent defenses of a (...) priori knowledge, the picture of science developed here is very different from that developed in Quinean holism in that categories of knowledge can be differentiated. (shrink)

Most current theories of meaning and mental content accept externalism. One of its forceful exponents is Ruth Garrett Millikan. She argues that externalism leads to the abandonment of "the last myth of the given", that is, of the idea that identity of meaning and mental content is somehow unproblematically given to us, and that we can easily recognize the sameness of meaning and mental content. If one refuses such a "mythical" giveness or meaning rationalism, one has to admit that there (...) is no logical possibility known a priori . The paper tries to show that even if one abandons meaning rationalism one can still hold that there are logical possibilities known a priori . The claim is defended by arguing that a priori knowledge is not completely independent from experience and does not demand the absolute transparency of meaning from the first-person point of view. A priori knowledge requires only a priori justification, that is, such a justification that is based merely on relations between meanings or contents. (shrink)