Matthew Green
Published: 21 January 2019
Is there an epistemologically interesting and philosophically significant analysis of the a priori?
University of St Andrews
Is there an epistemologically interesting and philosophically significant analysis of the a priori?
The classic characterisation of a priori knowledge is that it is knowledge acquired independently of experience. The resilient problem with this classification is to say what counts as experience, and what it is for the acquisition of knowledge to be independent of it. A persistent trend towards scepticism and deflationism has been closely connected with this problem. Following Casullo (2015), these challenges to the notion of a priority can be organised into four broad categories: (i) the notion is incoherent, (ii) the notion is coherent but vacuous, (iii) the notion is coherent, non-vacuous but insignificant, and (iv) the notion is coherent, non-vacuous, significant, but in tension with other aspects of the traditional view of the a priori or with other contemporary epistemic notions.
The principal thesis will be that a priori and a posteriori beliefs are governed by two distinct kinds of epistemic norm, that this distinction underwrites a characterisation of a priority, and that this characterisation is coherent, non-vacuous, significant, and consistent both with a traditional view of the a priori and with other contemporary epistemic notions.
First published: 21 January 2019