IDEAS + TERMS + MOVEMENTS Whether we are speaking or writing, we will be more persuasive if we have a clear idea of the meaning of the words we use. In this new series of posts I shall offer a pretty comprehensive set of ideas, terms and movements. I hope you will find at least some of them useful and perhaps even enlightening. Please feel free to comment. A Priori / A Posteriori Central terms in epistemology, contrasting two kinds of knowledge according to the way the human mind apprehends it, that is, with and without recourse to experience. A priori knowledge is prior to, and independent of, observation or experiment; a posteriori knowledge comes only after direct experience. A priori is the problematic side of this pairing. Determining what constitutes a priori knowledge depends on the assumptions one begins with. Knowledge an be said to be a priori if it is independent of a particular experience (e.g. I know that if I drop a stone it will fall) or if it precedes any experience (this is the concept of innate ideas). Similarly, some hold that certain statement in logic and mathematics are a priori (or analytic) since they depend only on the laws of their discipline; but others insist that those rules presuppose the truths of the axioms that support them. Parallel to the a priori / a posteriori distinction is that between analytic and synthetic judgements -- the difference, in effect, between statements whose truth depends purely on the meaning of their terms (All bachelors are unmarried) and those that require outside evidence to determine their truth or falsity (All bachelors live alone). Analytic judgements are a priori because they do not depend on experience: however, since they tell us nothing new, they are of no practical use. The absolute distinction between an analytic statement and a synthetic statement has lately been questioned, especially by the American philosopher Willard van Orman Quine, since the definitions of words are changeable, imprecise, and disputed, the synonymy required to make a true analytic statement may be impossible to achieve.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:22:03 +0000
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