Analyticity and the A Priori

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 113-150
Author(s):  
Albert Casullo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
The Other ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Priori Knowledge

The analytic/synthetic distinction has played a central role in discussions of a priori knowledge throughout the twentieth century. One of the primary reasons for the prominence of this distinction is the widespread influence of the tradition of logical empiricism which endorsed the following principles:(LEl) All analytic propositions are knowable a prioriand(LE2) All propositions knowable a priori are analytic.Hence, proponents of the a priori often argue in support of the contention that the propositions of a particular discipline, say mathematics or logic, are knowable a priori by arguing that it consists solely of analytic propositions. On the other hand, detractors of the a priori often reject such knowledge on the grounds that the analytic/synthetic distinction is not cogent. My primary goal in this paper is to challenge the prevalent acceptance of (LE1).

Assessing the role of a priori user knowledge in climate services perception: An experiment with university students across Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Pimentel ◽  
María José Polo ◽  
María José Pérez-Palazón ◽  
Stefan Achleitner ◽  
Manuel Díez-Minguito ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Previous Knowledge ◽  
Production Chain ◽  
Complex Information ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
User Knowledge ◽  
Priori Knowledge

<p>By definition a climate service (CS) is a provision of climate information to assist decision-making. Therefore, CS users are the crucial agent in the CS production chain. User role needs to go further than only making use of the CS, their function must be taken into account during CS design and implementation. This can be accomplished by creating a feedback loop, in which users interact with CS developers. Nevertheless, the a priori user knowledge (i.e. their background, expectations of CS, previous experiences with CS) can condition user role in this co-development process. Identifying this previous knowledge and how this can condition user perception about CS is not easy. On-line surveys and personal interviews which are the most extended technique to gather information about users, on the one hand, are not usually designed to dig into the user a priori knowledge, and on the other hand, can be influenced by many subjective aspects.</p><p>This work tries to assess the role of user previous knowledge and the perception that users have about CS. An experiment was designed and carried out with about 100 final year bachelor and master engineering students (agronomic, civil, forestry, geotechnical, hydraulic) across Europe (Germany, Austria, France and Spain) as potential CS users with similar initial knowledge. In the experiment the student population was split into two samples. Specific CS training was given to one, no training to the other. Therefore, users with and without a priori knowledge about CS were simulated. Then a role game, in which they become consultants hired by a water management authority to make a decision regarding the management of a lake, was played.  Different levels of information (i.e. ensemble mean, ensemble spread, robustness of climate model) are provided to the students along the game to evaluate basic climate concepts.</p><p>Experiment results show that previous knowledge has a role in the decision taken by the users. Trained users required more complex information before being willing to make a decision, while non-trained ones trust less complex information. No significant differences were found between countries or the two educational levels. </p><p>This work was funded by the project AQUACLEW, which is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by FORMAS (SE), DLR (DE), BMWFW (AT), IFD (DK), MINECO (ES), ANR (FR) with co-funding by the European Commission [Grant 690462].</p>

Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin McGinn
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
External World ◽  
The Other ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Knowledge Tradition ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This chapter focuses on philosophical issues in knowledge. Tradition insists that knowledge falls into two broad classes: a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge. These categories are conceived as exclusive and exhaustive: no piece of knowledge is both a priori and a posteriori, and any piece of knowledge is one or the other. One can characterize a posteriori knowledge as knowledge acquired by means of the senses (“by experience”) and a priori knowledge as knowledge not so acquired, but rather acquired “by reason alone” or “intuitively.” The chapter then addresses the proof or evidence of the existence of an external world, and looks deeper into what knowledge is and whether knowledge implies truth.

Necessity, Existence and Transcendental Idealism

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 55-77
Author(s):  
Robert Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Other Hand

The role of transcendental idealism in Kant's theory of knowledge has been both deliberately underrated1 and inadvertently exaggerated. If conceivably not necessary, its role in Kant's explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason is at least pivotal to the success of the explanation. On the other hand, though transcendental idealism depends on Kant's epistemological criterion of an existing object, or, simply, his criterion of existence, the criterion for its part is actually independent of the idealism. In fact, it may be because this independence has hardly been recognized that commentators have been unaware of the role the criterion may actually be playing in the continuing controversy over the correct interpretation of the idealism. Altogether, this article addresses both shortcomings – the underestimation and the exaggeration of the role of the idealism in Kant's epistemology. While it places the idealism at the centre of the epistemology, it also separates the criterion of existence from the idealism. In highlighting this contrast, the article explains how the criterion may actually be contributing to the persistence of the ongoing dispute over the correct interpretation of the idealism.

Understanding the Revisability Thesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Célia Teixeira
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Priori Knowledge

W. V. Quine famously claimed that no statement is immune to revision. This thesis has had a profound impact on twentieth century philosophy, and it still occupies centre stage in many contemporary debates. However, despite its importance it is not clear how it should be interpreted. The author shows that the thesis is in fact ambiguous between three substantially different theses. She illustrates the importance of clarifying it by assessing its use in the debate against the existence of a priori knowledge. She shows how the three different readings of the thesis can be used to generate three substantially different and philosophically significant arguments against the a priori. The author further challenges each one of these arguments against the a priori.

Denial of the Synthetic A Priori

Philosophy ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 35 (134) ◽  
pp. 255-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Logical Empiricist ◽  
Traditional Philosophy ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
Logical Impossibility

In his essay “Logical Empiricism”, in the anthology Twentieth Century Philosophy, Professor Feigl writes: “All forms of empiricism agree in repudiating the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge.” 2 Schlick makes the same point even more forcibly: “The empiricism which I represent believes itself to be clear on the point that, as a matter of principle, all propositions are either synthetic a posteriori or tautologous; synthetic a priori propositions seem to it to be a logical impossibility.”3 The denial of synthetic a prioris is a major thesis of the logical empiricist position, being found in the writings of most of the leaders of the movement.4 The reason for its importance is fairly clear. It provides a formula on which the empiricists can base their critique of traditional philosophy. To use Ayer's phrase, denial of the synthetic a priori results in “the elimination of metaphysics”. The philosophical tradition to which the empiricists are opposed and whose “metaphysics” they wish to eliminate can be called, somewhat loosely, rationalism.

State of Fashion: Searching for the New Luxury

APRIA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
José Teunissen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
The Other ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

In the last few years, it has often been said that the current fashion system is outdated, still operating by a twentieth-century model that celebrates the individualism of the 'star designer'. In I- D, Sarah Mower recently stated that for the last twenty years, fashion has been at a cocktail party and has completely lost any connection with the public and daily life. On the one hand, designers and big brands experience the enormous pressure to produce new collections at an ever higher pace, leaving less room for reflection, contemplation, and innovation. On the other hand, there is the continuous race to produce at even lower costs and implement more rapid life cycles, resulting in disastrous consequences for society and the environment.

Seeing, Knowing, and Doing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Action ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Discriminative Response ◽  
Rich Information ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This book provides an overall theory of perception and an account of knowledge and justification concerning the physical, the abstract, and the normative. It has the rigor appropriate for professionals but explains its main points using concrete examples. It accounts for two important aspects of perception on which philosophers have said too little: its relevance to a priori knowledge—traditionally conceived as independent of perception—and its role in human action. Overall, the book provides a full-scale account of perception, presents a theory of the a priori, and explains how perception guides action. It also clarifies the relation between action and practical reasoning; the notion of rational action; and the relation between propositional and practical knowledge. Part One develops a theory of perception as experiential, representational, and causally connected with its objects: as a discriminative response to those objects, embodying phenomenally distinctive elements; and as yielding rich information that underlies human knowledge. Part Two presents a theory of self-evidence and the a priori. The theory is perceptualist in explicating the apprehension of a priori truths by articulating its parallels to perception. The theory unifies empirical and a priori knowledge by clarifying their reliable connections with their objects—connections many have thought impossible for a priori knowledge as about the abstract. Part Three explores how perception guides action; the relation between knowing how and knowing that; the nature of reasons for action; the role of inference in determining action; and the overall conditions for rational action.

How Reality is Reasonable

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Dimensional Manifold ◽  
The World ◽  
Being There ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Fundamental Entity ◽  
Spatiotemporal Relations ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This chapter begins with a systematic presentation of the doctrine of actualism. According to actualism, all that exists is actual, determinate, and of one way of being. There are no possible objects, nor is there any indeterminacy in the world. In addition, there are no ways of being. It is proposed that actual entities stand in three fundamental relations: mereological, spatiotemporal, and resemblance relations. These relations govern the fundamental entities. Each fundamental entity stands in parthood relations, spatiotemporal relations, and resemblance relations to other entities. The resulting picture is one that represents the world as a four-dimensional manifold of actual ‘qualitied contents’—upon which all else supervenes. It is then explained how actualism accounts for classes, quantity, number, causation, laws, a priori knowledge, necessity, and induction.

How Do We Know that We’re Not Brains in Vats?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith DeRose
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Conservative Approach ◽  
Contingent Fact ◽  
Brains In Vats ◽  
Priori Knowledge

In this chapter the contextualist Moorean account of how we know by ordinary standards that we are not brains in vats (BIVs) utilized in Chapter 1 is developed and defended, and the picture of knowledge and justification that emerges is explained. The account (a) is based on a double-safety picture of knowledge; (b) has it that our knowledge that we’re not BIVs is in an important way a priori; and (c) is knowledge that is easily obtained, without any need for fancy philosophical arguments to the effect that we’re not BIVs; and the account is one that (d) utilizes a conservative approach to epistemic justification. Special attention is devoted to defending the claim that we have a priori knowledge of the deeply contingent fact that we’re not BIVs, and to distinguishing this a prioritist account of this knowledge from the kind of “dogmatist” account prominently championed by James Pryor.

Gender and Social Exclusion in European Migration Crisis

2018 ◽  
pp. 658-676
Author(s):  
Marlou Schrover
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
The One ◽  
European Migration

This chapter discusses social exclusion in European migration from a gendered and historical perspective. It discusses how from this perspective the idea of a crisis in migration was repeatedly constructed. Gender is used in this chapter in a dual way: attention is paid to differences between men and women in (refugee) migration, and to differences between men and women as advocates and claim makers for migrant rights. There is a dilemma—recognized mostly for recent decades—that on the one hand refugee women can be used to generate empathy, and thus support. On the other hand, emphasis on women as victims forces them into a victimhood role and leaves them without agency. This dilemma played itself out throughout the twentieth century. It led to saving the victims, but not to solving the problem. It fortified rather than weakened the idea of a crisis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document