A priori knowledge: does it exist?

Of course there are things we 'just know'. But they are often wrong.

If a proposition is wrong, what sense does it make to say anyone "knows" it?

Hence the ' '.

You're right. There are false beliefs. We don't refer to false beliefs as knowledge. Is there a priori knowledge?

Of course we do. Things that we believe we know are knowledge to us whether they are false or not.

If there was "a priori" knowledge... wouldn't it necessarily be things that people have known across culture and time?

There aren't many beliefs that are common across times and cultures. I would be interested if you could give some examples.... It seems to me that truth varies from culture to culture.

Ah. Can't get to a priori for the question of what constitutes knowledge. Deserves its own discussion.

I am claiming that ....

1) In order for the term "a priori knowledge" to make any sense, there must be one or more things that are known by people in every culture and era.

2) Other than basic biological truths (breathing, eating) there are no such things.

"A priori knowledge" merely refers to that which is known prior to experience of the world.

Perhaps you could present an argument for why a priori knowledge entails common knowledge of any type?

i have a little bit of knowledge about the maori and piri piri


oh, and perogies, if that helps

Sure... here is the argument

1) Any knowledge that is known to humans before they are exposed to a culture will have nothing to do with which culture they are born into.

2) Any knowledge that humans have that has nothing to do with their culture will be seen across cultures.

You can't have culturally based knowledge before you are exposed to a culture, can you?

Re: 1): Knowledge that exists prior to the experience of being in a culture would qualify as a priori. Why does that knowledge necessarily have to "nothing to do" with one's home culture?

Re: 2) Quine's argument for a priori knowledge focuses on the capacity to apply a principle to a new situation. One wouldn't expect that expertise to be exclusive to a few human cultures. Analytical philosophy doesn't aspire to rule on such things, though.

1) What you are saying doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like the first sentence wrote answers the question you raise in the next sentence.

Can you give a specific example of something that people might know before they are influenced by culture?

2) You say...



This is exactly the point that I am making. When you look at the real world, you see that there are widely different beliefs seen in cultures... particularly cultures with no direct contact.

This is the very clear evidence that there is no A priori knowledge (outside of simple biological needs).

Do you think there is a culture in which people don't have the ability to apply principles to new situations? At any rate, if there is only one person who does have that ability, a priori knowledge exists per Quine.

There is knowledge enough so you can acquire more knowledge...

Exactly.

He fooled you, Max. He aint talkin about the "real world."

As I recall, Kant made a distinction between a priori knowledge which dealt only with "analytic truths" such as tautologies in logic and mathematical calculations; and a posteriori knowledge which dealt with "synthetic truths" such as might be found via empirical sensations.

His question was something like this: Is it possible to have analytic knowledge of synthetic propositions?

He finally said that it is, and cited Euclidean geometry as an example where analytic truths are also synthetic truths, because they apply to the "real world." Of course that was before Einstein got ahold of Riemannian geometry and claimed that IT applies to the world.

Well, them's the breaks, eh?

Without distinguishing between 'knowing how' and 'knowing that', we could argue that babies 'know how' to swim etc, prior to formal teaching. It maybe that we cannot distinguish between 'hard wired' physical skills and cognitive processes such as 'perceiving causality', (one of Kant's apiori ?). This would of course be a reductionist argument regarding 'cognition'.
Beyond that, it seems to me that the a priori knowledge debate is merely a by-product of a Wittgensteinian 'language game' involving the word 'knowledge'. Pragmatists like Rorty endorse Quine's view (I think) concluding that Philosophy can say nothing useful about epistemological foundations.

You can't argue that babies know how to swim. They don't. This is easy to test.

If you throw a baby with no training into the water, it will drown. If you wait until the child is ten, and then throw it with no training into the water... it will still drown.

Swimming is something that is taught.

All of this strange philosophic musing seems to have nothing to do with reality. Can we come up with a real world example of alleged "a priori knowledge" that isn't obviously wrong?