The A Priori

Traditional rationalist approaches to a priori epistemology have long been looked upon with suspicion for positing a faculty of rational intuition capable of knowing truths about the world apart from experience. Conceptualists have tried to fill this void with something more empirically tractable, arguing that we know a priori truths due to our understanding of concepts. All of this theorizing, however, has carried on while neglecting an entire cross section of such truths, the grounding claims that we know a priori. (...) Taking a priori grounding into account poses a significant challenge to conceptualist accounts of a priori knowledge, as it is unclear how merely understanding conceptual connections can account for knowledge of grounding. The fact that we do know some grounding truths a priori, then, is a significant mark in traditional rationalism’s favor, and the next frontier for those who aim to eliminate the mystery surrounding a priori knowledge. (shrink)

Nous traduisons, pour la première fois en langue française, l’essai célèbre de Clarence Irving Lewis, « A pragmatic conception of the a priori ». Cette traduction est précédée d’une introduction revenant sur les deux moments argumentatifs clés de la refonte par Lewis des notions d’a priori et de catégorie : la critique des conceptions traditionnelles de l’a priori et de la manière dont elles comprennent les deux éléments constitutifs du concept d’a priori, à savoir la nécessité et l’indépendance à l’égard (...) de l’expérience ; l’alternative que C. I. Lewis élabore en lieu et place de ces conceptions et qui peut être entendue comme une conception tout à la fois pratique et pragmatique de l’a priori et des catégories. C’est la pièce angulaire du pragmatisme conceptuel élaboré dans le maître ouvrage de C. I. Lewis, Mind and the World Order qui se trouve ainsi élucidée. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this paper, I sketch an account of intuitions on which intuitions are seemings. My paper consists of four sections. I the first section, I give an overview of the conceptions of intuitions that are endorsed in the recent literature and examine their interrelations. In the second section of the paper, I present an argument in favour of the view that intuitions are seemings. I argue that this view is backed up by linguistic data. In the third section of the (...) paper, I try to motivate the claim that the content of intuitions is not necessarily modal. In the last section of the paper, I discuss whether some intuitions are a priori. I examine an argument due to Alvin Goldman that intuitions do not confer a priori warrant. I try to argue that Goldman's argument does not establish that intuitive warrant is not a priori. In the remainder of the section, I try to develop a positive view. I argue that whether an intuition is a priori is a matter of their etiology. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch an account of intuitions according to which intuitions are seemings. My paper consists of four sections. I the first section, I give an overview of the conceptions of intuitions that are endorsed in the literature and examine their interrelations. In the second section of the paper, I present an argument in favour of the view that intuitions are seemings. I argue that this view is backed up by certain linguistic data and that there exist linguistic (...) data against rival views, on which intuitions can be reduced to doxastic states or dispositions to doxastic states. In the third section of the paper, I motivate the claim that the content of an intuition is not modal. In the last section of the paper, I discuss whether some intuitions are a priori. I examine an argument due to Alvin Goldman that intuitions do not confer a priori warrant. I argue that Goldmans argument does not establish that intuitive warrant is not a priori. In the remainder of the section, I try to develop a positive view about what characterises an intuition as being apt to confer a priori warrant. I argue that the fact whether an intuition is a priori is a matter of their etiology. (shrink)

This chapter assumes that intuitions must play a central role in explaining a priori justification and looks at the conditions under which they would be able to do so. It argues that if an appeal to intuitions is to help, they must provide epistemological resources that go beyond those provided by explanations in terms of epistemological analyticity (appeals to conceptual understanding). Accounts, like Ernest Sosa’s, which reduce intuitions to attractions to assent, and which give the understanding an indispensable role in (...) explaining the justificatory powers of such attractions, are unable to provide such a resource. As a result, such accounts must be rejected. Towards the end of the chapter, an alternative account of these issues is briefly presented, one that seems to the author to hold greater promise. (shrink)

It is nowadays standard to distinguish between epistemic and metaphysical analyticity. Metaphysical analyticity has been widely rejected, while epistemic analyticity has been widely endorsed. I argue that we also have good reason to reject epistemic analyticity. I do so by considering all the plausible ways of characterizing epistemic analyticity and of drawing the epistemic analytic–synthetic distinction. I argue that on all of them, the distinction fails to carve at the semantic joints. I conclude that there is good reason to think (...) that there is no semantic distinction to be drawn between analytic and synthetic sentences. (shrink)

Is imagination a source of knowledge? Timothy Williamson has recently argued that our imaginative capacities can yield knowledge of a variety of matters, spanning from everyday practical matters to logic and set theory. Furthermore, imagination for Williamson plays a similar epistemic role in cognitive processes that we would traditionally classify as either a priori or a posteriori, which he takes to indicate that the distinction itself is shallow and epistemologically fruitless. In this chapter, I aim to defend the a priori-a (...) posteriori distinction from Williamson’s challenge by questioning his account of imagination. I distinguish two notions of imagination at play in Williamson’s account – sensory vs. belief-like imagination – and show that both face empirical and normative issues. Sensory imagination seems neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge. Whereas, belief-like imagination isn’t adequately disentangled from inference. Additionally, Williamson’s examples are ad hoc and don’t generalize. I conclude that Williamson’s case against the a priori-a posteriori distinction is unconvincing, and so is the thesis that imagination is an epistemic source. (shrink)

The book records a series of philosophical exchanges between its authors, amounting to a debate extended over more than fifteen years. Its subject matter is the nature and scope of reason. A central case at issue is basic logical knowledge, and the justification for basic deductive inferences, but the arguments range far more widely, at stake the distinctions between analytic and synthetic, and between a priori and a posteriori. The discussion naturally involves problems about the conditions for linguistic understanding and (...) competence, and what it might be to grasp a concept or to have an intuition. Since reason is central to philosophical method, there are associated implications for how philosophy itself works, or should work. In particular, the discussion raises fundamental concerns about how to approach epistemology. -/- . (shrink)

The present paper deals with the ontological status of numbers and considers Frege ́s proposal in Grundlagen upon the background of the Post-Kantian semantic turn in analytical philosophy. Through a more systematic study of his philosophical premises, it comes to unearth a first level paradox that would unset earlier still than it was exposed by Russell. It then studies an alternative path, that departin1g from Frege’s initial premises, drives to a conception of numbers as synthetic a priori in a more (...) Kantian sense. On this basis, it tentatively explores a possible derivation of basic logical rules on their behalf, suggesting a more rudimentary basis to inferential thinking, which supports reconsidering the difference between logical thinking and AI. Finally, it reflects upon the contributions of this approach to the problem of the a priori. (shrink)

Christopher Hill contends that the metaphysical modalities can be reductively explained in terms of the subjunctive conditional and that this reductive explanation yields two tests for determining the metaphysical modality of a proposition. He goes on to argue that his reductive account of the metaphysical modalities in conjunction with his account of modal knowledge underwrites the further conclusion that conceivability does not provide a reliable test for metaphysical possibility. I argue (1) that Hill’s reductive explanation of the metaphysical modalities in (...) terms of the subjunctive conditional does not yield a reductive explanation of knowledge of metaphysical modality in terms of knowledge of subjunctive conditionals, and (2) that his account of modal knowledge is at odds with his contention that conceivability does not provide epistemic access to metaphysical possibility. (shrink)

Recent empirical studies raise methodological concerns about the use of intuitions in philosophy. According to one prominent line of reply, these concerns are unwarranted since the empirical studies motivating them do not control for the putatively characteristic phenomenology of intuitions. This paper makes use of research on metacognitive states that have precisely this phenomenology to argue that the above reply fails. Furthermore, it shows that empirical findings about these metacognitive states can help philosophers make better informed assessments of their warrant (...) for relying on intuitions in inquiry. (shrink)

With the discovery of consistent non-Euclidean geometries, the a priori status of Euclidean proof was radically undermined. In response, philosophers proposed two revisionary interpretations of the practice: some argued that Euclidean proof is a purely formal system of deductive logic; others suggested that Euclidean reasoning is empirical, employing concepts derived from experience. I argue that both interpretations fail to capture the true nature of our geometrical thought. Euclidean proof is not a system of pure logic, but one in which our (...) grasp of the content of geometrical concepts plays a central role; moreover, our grasp of this content is a priori. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the so-called Access Problem for Duncan Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism (2012). After reconstructing Pritchard’s own response to the Access Problem, I argue that in order to assess whether Pritchard’s response is a satisfying one, we first need an account of the notion of ‘Reflective Access’ that underpins Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism. I provide three interpretations of the notion of Reflective Access: a metaphysical interpretation, a folk interpretation, and an epistemic interpretation. I argue that none of these three (...) interpretations comes without problems. I conclude that, until we have a clear and unproblematic account of Reflective Access, the Access Problem remains a challenge for Pritchard’s Epistemological Disjunctivism. (shrink)

The past twenty-five years have seen a major renewal of interest in the topic of a priori knowledge. In the sixteen essays collected here, which span this entire period, philosopher Albert Casullo documents the complex set of issues motivating the renewed interest, identifies the central epistemological questions, and provides the leading ideas of a unified response to them.

The editor's introduction discusses Clarence I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism when compared with post-empiricist epistemology and argues that several Cartesian assumptions play a major role in the work, not unlike those of Logical Positivism. The suggestion is made that the Cartesian legacy still hidden in Logical Positivism turns out to be a rather heavy ballast for Lewis’s project of restructuring epistemology in a pragmatist key. More in detail, the sore point is the nature of inter-subjectivity. For Lewis, no less than for (...) the Logical Positivists at the time of the Protocols Controversy and Husserl in the Cartesian Meditations, this is a problem without a solution. The reason is that all these philosophers are apparently unable to realize that the existence of a plurality of knowing subjects cannot be treated at once both as a speculative problem and a methodological one. Lewis, thanks to his pragmatist approach both comes closer to the right answer and offers an even more naïve unsatisfactory solution to the pseudo-problem under discussion. The fact that he has clear in mind that inter-subjectivity means not only a plurality of linguistic utterances but also a co-existence of different kinds of practical behaviour. Eventually, the very idea of mind, the key-idea in the book, suffers from the above mentioned tension. In fact, if inter-subjective communication and action is considered at a methodological level, the very idea of mind would not need an analysis, and no kind of ‘reflexive’ analysis. Methodology might be limited to a ‘naïve’ level where the existence of the world and a plurality of subjects be taken as a bedrock of uncritically accepted evidence. Philosophical reflection on ultimate evidence, instead, would take a different approach, maybe the one Wittgenstein was putting into practice in the same years when Mind and the world order was written, namely it would be bound to question the very meaning of the idea of ‘mind’ as an undue fiction – the same carried out by Descartes – when he assumed the Cogito to be at once a body of self-evident truths and a thing or substance, the familiar Platonic idea of psyche or soul. (shrink)

In "Motivation and the Primacy of Perception," I offer an interpretation and defense of Merleau-Ponty's thesis of the "primacy of perception," namely, that knowledge is ultimately founded in perceptual experience. I use Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological conception of "motivation" as an interpretative key. As I show, motivation in this sense amounts to a novel form of epistemic grounding, one which upends the classical dichotomy between reason and natural causality, justification and explanation. The purpose of my book is to show how this novel (...) conception of epistemic ground allows Merleau-Ponty to offer a radically new account of knowledge and its relation to perception. Over the course of seven chapters, I show that through the notion of motivation, Merleau-Ponty offers a compelling alternative to the empiricist and rationalist assumptions that underpin modern epistemology. Indeed, I argue that Merleau-Ponty's epistemological thinking is preferable to its major historical and contemporary competitors, including what I see as the other great alternative to rationalism and empiricism: Kant's transcendental idealism. Bridging phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, "Motivation and the Primacy of Perception" argues that epistemology has long been hampered by an inadequate phenomenology of knowledge. However, a careful description of the phenomenon of motivation can offer compelling new ways to think about knowledge and longstanding epistemological questions. (shrink)

Three classic distinctions specify that truths can be necessary versus contingent,analytic versus synthetic, and a priori versus a posteriori. The philosopher reading this article knows very well both how useful and ordinary such distinctions are in our conceptual work and that they have been subject to many and detailed debates, especially the last two. In the following pages, I do not wish to discuss how far they may be tenable. I shall assume that, if they are reasonable and non problematic (...) in some ordinary cases, then they can be used in order to understand what kind of knowledge the maker’s knowledge is. By this I mean the sort of knowledge that Alice enjoys when she holds the information that Bob’s coffee is sweetened because she just put two spoons of sugar in it herself. The maker’s knowledge tradition is quite important but it is not mainstream in modern and analytic epistemology and lacks grounding in terms of exactly what sort of knowledge one is talking about. My suggestion is that this grounding can be provided by a minimalist approach, based on an information-theoretical analysis. In the article, I argue that we need to decouple a fourth distinction, namely informative versus uninformative, from the previous three and, in particular, from its implicit association with analytic versus synthetic and a priori versus a posteriori; such a decoupling facilitates, and is facilitated by, moving from a monoagent to a multiagent approach: the distinctions qualify a proposition, a message, or some information not just in themselves but relationally, with respect to an informational agent; the decoupling and the multiagent approach enable a re-mapping of currently available positions in epistemology on these four dichotomies; within such a re-mapping, two positions, capturing the nature of a witness’ knowledge and of a maker’s knowledge, can best be described as contingent, synthetic, a posteriori, and uninformative and as contingent, synthetic, weakly a priori, and uninformative respectively. In the conclusion, I indicate why the analysis of the maker’s knowledge has important consequences in all those cases in which the poietic intervention on a system determines the truth of the model of that system. (shrink)

This chapter considers Ernest Sosa’s contributions to philosophical methodology. In Section 1, Sosa’s approach to the role of intuitions in the epistemology of philosophy is considered and related to his broader virtue-theoretic epistemological framework. Of particular focus is the question whether false or unjustified intuitions may justify. Section 2 considers Sosa’s response to sceptical challenges about intuitions, especially those deriving from experimental philosophy. I argue that Sosa’s attempt to attribute apparent disagreement in survey data to difference in meaning fails, but (...) that some of his other, more general, responses to experimentalist sceptics succeed. (shrink)

Rationalists often argue that empiricism is incoherent and conclude, on that basis, that some knowledge is a priori. I contend that such arguments against empiricism cannot be parlayed into an argument in support of the a priori since rationalism is open to the same arguments. I go on to offer an alternative strategy. The leading idea is that, instead of offering a priori arguments against empiricism, rationalists should marshal empirical support for their position.

Anyone taking a class in Modern Philosophy will learn that one of the most important issues in 17th and 18th Century philosophy was the debate between rationalists and empiricists. In 2005, Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa edited a book entitled Contemporary Debates In Epistemology, which includes a chapter entitled ‘Is There A Priori Knowledge?’. In this chapter, Laurence BonJour defends rationalism and Michael Devitt defends empiricism. So, this philosophical debate has been going on for four centuries, and it still has (...) not been settled. This is the kind of thing that gets philosophy a bad reputation. If a dispute can continue for four centuries without resolution, that is surely an indication that nobody knows how to tell a good answer from a bad one. In this article I want to consider why the debate is unresolved after so much time. (shrink)

Infallibilism about a priori justification is the thesis that for an agent A to be a priori justified in believing p, that which justifies A's belief that p must guarantee the truth of p. No analogous thesis is thought to obtain for empirically justified beliefs. The aim of this article is to argue that infallibilism about the a priori is an untenable philosophical position and to provide theoretical understanding why we not only can be, but rather must be, a priori (...) justified in believing some false propositions. The argument develops notions of obviousness and conceptual understanding as a means of affording insight into the conditions for having a priori justification and, consequently, into why infallibilism cannot stand. (shrink)

In ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Quine attacks the analytic/synthetic distinction and defends a doctrine that I call epistemological holism. Now, almost fifty years after the article’s appearance, what are we to make of these ideas? I suggest that the philosophical naturalism that Quine did so much to promote should lead us to reject Quine’s brief against the analytic/synthetic distinction; I also argue that Quine misunderstood Carnap's views on analyticity. As for epistemological holism, I claim that this thesis does not follow (...) from the logical point that Duhem and Quine made about the role of auxiliary assumptions in hypothesis testing, and that the thesis should be rejected. (shrink)

In In Defense of Pure Reason [IDPR], BonJour advances a version of moderate rationalism, the thesis that rational insight is an independent, though fallible, source of a priori epistemic justification. To demonstrate that this thesis must obtain, BonJour argues that rational insight is truth conducive and that no infallibilist rationalist theory could be correct. This article aims to establish two points: BonJour’s argument for the fallibilist thesis is problematic because it invokes implausible conditions on justification, conditions that even BonJour rejects; (...) BonJour’s argument for the truth conduciveness of rational insight fails because it does not account for the truth-conduciveness of fallible rational insights. (shrink)

Edward Erwin has recently argued against the thesis that the concepts a priori truth’ and ‘necessary truth’ are extensionally equivalent. This thesis consists of two logically independent claims: all a priori truths are necessary; and all necessary truths are a priori. Erwin leaves the first claim unchallenged and elects to devote his efforts exclusively to undermining the second. The brunt of his attack on the second claim rests on alleged unclarities in the concept of an a priori truth. He attempts (...) to show that the E.E.H. cannot be defended upon any plausible interpretation of this concept. Although I agree that the E.E.H., as stated above, is open to Erwin's objections, I shall argue that a slightly revised version of it can be defended against these objections. (shrink)

For all the inadequacies of empiricism that BonJour admirably sets out in his first three chapters, one wonders whether rationalism is any better off. I’m afraid I don’t find BonJour’s account reassuring. It seems to be precisely the one that has led so many to be wary of the a priori in the first place. I want here to reiterate the reasons for that wariness, and sketch what seems to me a more promising approach.

It is a natural assumption in mainstream epistemological theory that ascriptions of knowledge of a proposition p track strength of epistemic position vis-à-vis p. It is equally natural to assume that the strength of one’s epistemic position is maximally high in cases where p concerns a simple analytic truth. For instance, it seems reasonable to suppose that one’s epistemic position vis-à-vis “a cat is a cat” is harder to improve than one’s position vis-à-vis “a cat is on the mat”, and (...) consequently, that the former is at least as unambiguous a case of knowledge as the latter. The current paper, however, presents empirical evidence which challenges this intuitive line of reasoning. Our study on the epistemic intuitions of hundreds of academic philosophers supports the idea that simple and uncontroversial analytic propositions are less likely to qualify as knowledge than empirical ones. We show that our results, though at odds with orthodox theories of knowledge in mainstream epistemology, can be explained in a way consistent with Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinge propositions’ or with Stalnaker’s pragmatics of assertion. We then present and evaluate a number of lines of response mainstream theories of knowledge could appeal to in accommodating our results. Finally, we show how each line of response runs into some prima facie difficulties. Thus, our observed asymmetry between knowing “a cat is a cat” and knowing “a cat is on the mat” presents a puzzle which mainstream epistemology needs to resolve. (shrink)

Michael Devitt has been developing an influential two-pronged attack on the a priori for over thirteen years. This attack does not attempt to undermine the coherence or significance of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, but rather to answer the question: 'What Can We Know A Priori?' with: 'Nothing'. In this paper I explain why I am dissatisfied with key extant responses to Devitt's attack, and then take my own steps towards resisting the attack as it (...) appears in two recent incarnations. Devitt aims firstly to undermine the motivation for believing in any a priori knowledge, and secondly to provide reasons directly against believing in any. I argue that he misidentifies the motivations available to the a priorist, and that his reasons against believing in the a priori do not take account of all the options. I also argue that his attempt to combine the two prongs of the attack into an abductive argument for his anti-a priorist position does not succeed. (shrink)