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Vahid - A Priori Knowledge
Vahid - A Priori Knowledge
A bstract
Some recent discussions of a priori knowle dge, taking their departure from
Kant’s characterization of such knowledge as being absolutely independent
of experience, have concluded that while one might delineate a concept of
a priori knowledge, it fails to have any application as any purported case
of such knowledge can be unde rmined by suitably recalcitrant experiences.
In response, certain defenders of apriority have claimed that a priori justi-
cation only requires that a belief be positively dependent on no experience.
In this paper, I begin by showing how the exchange of arguments between
the disputants comes down, in the end, to no more than a display of
con icting intuitions. I shall then provide a diagnosis explaining how our
explication of a priori justi cation depends on our standards for applying
the term ‘a priori’ with this, in turn, re ecting our prior intentions as to
whether we are willing to allow the existence of such warrants. I shall further
argue that the claim that such knowledge can be affected by subversive
experience is not entirely compatible with the spirit of apriority. Finally I
conclude by making some methodological remarks about the prospects of
a positive characterization of a priori knowledge by comparing it to the
concept of knowledge.
Keywords: a priori knowledge; certainty; experience; defeasibility
and then seek to lay down some (minimal) conditions whose satisfaction
would ensure the existence of a priori knowledge (justi cation).
D espite the increasing sophistication of the arguments on both sides,
one is left with the impression that the real issue is being shroud ed in a
mist of confusion and misunderstanding, with philosophers often appearing
to be talking at cross purposes. While some categorically deny the exis-
tence of a priori warrants, others begin by proposing an analysis of the
concept that seems to guarantee that its extension will not be empty, thus
bringing about a deadlock. My aim in this paper is to uncover the grounds
for this stalemate and nd out why the debate has tended to slip, in the
end, to no more than a display of con icting intuitions on both sides. I
shall end the discussion by attempting to evaluate the prospects for a char-
acterization of the a priori that is in harmony with our most basic intuitions
about the concept. Let us, however, begin by quickly going through the
(more recent) history of the controversy.
(2) S knows a priori that p if and only if S believes that p and S’s
belief that p was produced by a process which is an a priori
warrant for it.
(3) a is an a priori warrant for S’s belief that p if and only if a is
a process such that, given any life e, suf cient for S for p,
(a) Some process of the same type could produce in S a belief
that p,
(b) If a process of the same type were to produce in S a belief
that p, then it would warrant S in believing that p,
(c) If a process of the same type were to produce in S a belief
that p, then p.
O n this account, a priori warrants are expected to prod uce true beliefs
in all counterfactual situations. They are never to lead us astray. The above
de nition can be seen as a challenge to the a priorist. H e must show
that any item of knowledge he claims to be a priori is produced by an
ultra-reliable process which could guarantee the same (true) belief in all
counterfactual situations, and which could continue to warrant the belief
in the face of all conceivable experience which might be thought to under-
mine it. In other words, the apriorist must show that no alternative
experience could undermine our con dence in the belief produced by
the process responsible. Conditions (3a), (3b) and (3c) (together with the
cognizer’s awareness of their satisfaction) in effect rule out the coexist-
ence of a priori knowledge with rational uncertainty and fallibility. They
are meant to capture the sense in which a priori knowledge is said to be
independent of exp erience. A ny warrant that deserves to be called ‘inde-
pendent of experience’ must, on this account, be indefeasible. A n a priori
warrant is a process whose ability to warrant the belief that p for S is
never undermined in any world in which S gains suf cient understanding
to believe that p.
A s can be seen, central to Kitcher’s assumptions is the thesis – call it
the ‘unrevisability thesis’ (U T) – that rational revisability is incompatible
with a priori justi cation. H e illustrates this point by arguing against a
remark made by Kripke to the effect that a priori knowledge is compat-
ible with uncertainty.
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D C, Casullo claims, should have little appeal for anyone who subscribes
to a reliabilist account of warrant, for it ignores the possibility that our
experiences, which may include m isleading evidence, might defeat the
warrant conferred on a belief by a reliable process. D C, in effect, rules out
the existence of possible worlds in which S acquires the concepts involved
in his (a priori) belief p but also has evidence, perhaps misleading, that the
process producing the belief is not reliable. But Casullo goes on to claim
that ‘there appears to be no inconsistency in the supposition that such worlds
exist’.11 Now since (3b) entails D C and D C is false, (3b) should be rejected.
Casullo’s rejection of (3b) sounds, however, more like the reiteration
of his intuitions than a real argument. H e suf ces to say that there is no
inconsistency in supposing that there are worlds in which the cognizer has
evidence, perhaps misleading, that the processes prod ucing a priori beliefs
are not reliable. But that is exactly what Kitcher is denying through his
condition (3b) . H e wants to say that for any warrant to be a priori, it
should be strong enough to discharge its warranting function in the face
of recalcitrant (‘unkind’) experiences, thus denying that there may be a
world in which a priori warrants coexist with unkind experiences. Casullo’s
‘argument’ against condition (3c) fares no better. (3c), we may recall,
requires a priori warrants to be ultra-reliable, meaning that they must not
produce any false beliefs. Why does Kitcher require this of a priori
warrants? The most likely possibility, according to Casullo, is that it is the
very notion of an a priori warrant which necessitates such a strong connec-
tion with truth. The reason why a person can ignore empirical information
about the world is that she possesses a method of arriving at belief which
guarantees true belief. This intuition, claims Casullo, ‘rests on very shaky
grounds’. For in order to be able to ignore empirical information about
the world, one would have to commit oneself not only to the existence
of a priori warrants but also to the following thesis (S) concerning the
strength of such warrants:
A nalogously, according to the modest apriorist, one can say that one’s
justi cation for believing p depends on the processes that produce and
sustain the belief in such a way that it does not depend on the processes
that may undermine its justi cation in counterfactual circumstances. A
priori warrants, thus, need only be positively independent of experience.
They may, however, be negatively dependent on experience and empir-
ical beliefs.
D espite the initial plausibility of the above example, Audi’s remarks, I
believe, highlight a point that undermines the fallibilist’s progra mme. The
point appears where Audi talks about the standards for applying the term
‘safety’. If we take very high standards about safety, e.g., being a sceptic
about safety, we are, says Audi, ‘likely to take the stronger view’, asserting
that when we take a walk in Washington Square our safety depends on
our not being harmed by ruf ans who are stalking Central Park. H e illus-
trates his point in the context of the fou ndationalism/coherentism
controversy. Foundationalism has often been charged with the claim that
no belief is really independent of other beliefs, and thus properly basic,
because the justi catory status of any belief may vary with changes in
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all too easy for the modest apriorist to argue for the negative dependence
of a priori warrants on experience from the analogy with, say, the lighting
of matches, which, in a perfectly coherent sense, can be said to depend
only negatively on the conditions excluded by the ceteris paribus clause.
The asymmetry consists in the fact that in the case of the lighting of
matches, our observing it in daily life and noting the conditions in which
it occurs (or fails to occur) provide us with enough grou nds to embark
on an initial but non-arbitrary analysis of its causal structure. But we lack
such a grip on the issue of the structure of our (purported) a priori beliefs
because not only do we fail to have any (settled) intuitions about the
intension of the concept of a priori, but we are also uncertain whether
there are any processes that confer a priori justi cation on the beliefs they
produce. We can plausibly claim, in the case of the matches, that their
lighting depends only negatively on the conditions being excluded by
the ceteris paribus clause because our description of the factors involved
corresponds to an already existing pattern. Not so in the case of our
(purported) a priori beliefs, whose very existence is in dispute here.15 It
is, therefore, not open to the modest apriorist to appeal rst to such analo-
gies to argue for a similar treatment of a priori beliefs, and then to proceed
to show that there are processes that satisfy his strictures. It is only when
we are equally certain of the existence of a priori warrants that we can
appeal to such analogies to delineate their structure. To do otherwise is
to put the cart before the horse. A part from highlighting the fact that
one’s views on apriority are more or less dictated by one’s intuitions
about whether there is any a priori knowledge, the points made in this
section also seem to suggest that modest apriorism is not an entirely stable
position. This conclusion can be further supported by a re-examination of
the transform ation prob lem, to which I shall now turn. Finally, I conclude
by making some methodo logical remarks about the prospects for settling
the debate.
seems to me that the signi cance of the transformation problem has been
played down by modest apriorists. To explain this, let us rst remind
ourselves of the (rather trivial) point that what is problematic about the
transformation question is not how the change in the epistemic status of
a priori beliefs is brought about, but whether such a change is compatible
with the spirit of apriority. For we know, from the work on the problem
of defeasibility and the nature of defeaters, that one’s epistemic status is
defeasible by all kinds of evidence (including misleading evidence that
one does not possess but is at the disposal of one’s community17). O nce
the epistemic situation of the cognizer becomes the focus of our atten-
tion, the question of how one’s epistemic status can be transform ed reduces
to mere triviality. A lmost all theories of epistemic justi cation include
defeasibility clauses referring to all sorts of defeaters, and it is not clear
why a priori justi cation, being a species of justi cation, shou ld constitute
an exception.18
What is problematic for modest apriorists is to exp lain whether this
phenomenon is compatible with the spirit of apriority as a species of justi-
cation that is supposed to be independent of experience. The prob lem
that still lingers is to explain whether it is possible for a justi ed belief
that is initially independent of experience to be affected by it afterwards
in a way compatible with its apriority. For it is very tempting to conclude
that the transform ation phenomenon is tantamount to admitting that the
state in question was never really (positively) independent of experience
after all. Being eager to combine fallibility with apriority, the modest apri-
orist, of course, denies this. It seems to me, however, that the
transformation phenomenon does not really sit well with apriorism. I think
that the question raised by the phenomenon is a genuine one in that it
alludes to a fundamental weakness in any theory of apriority that wants
to leave some room for revisability (because of empirical evidence).
To see this, consider the question not at the level of belief states but
at the level of their contents (propositions and statements). Posing the
question at the level of statements takes us back to the recent contro-
versy between the so-called ‘veri cationists’ and ‘falsi cationists’, namely,
the problem of demarcation. The issue was specially concerned with the
question whether universal statements should be regarded as having
empirical content. O n the veri ability criterion of demarcation such state-
ments were deemed to lack empirical content because they were not
veri able by any nite number of observation statements. This was,
however, highly unintuitive because some of these statements (such as the
laws of nature) were actually paradigm cases of empirical statements.
Falsi cationists, on the other hand, pointed out that it is not veri ability
but falsi ability by experience that is the hallmark of a scienti c and
empirical statement. To put it differently, it is not dependence on experi-
ence, in a positive sense, that confers empirical status on a statement, but
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Now what goes for the content of a belief (prop osition) goes for its state.
Just as the falsi ability of statements or propositions (i.e., their negative
dependence on experience) confers an empirical status on them, the
fact that the epistemic status of certain cognitive states is defeasible by
(i.e., negatively dependent on) experience tends to confer an empirical
character on them. It thus seems to me that the claim that a priori justi-
cation is defeasible by experience does, to some extent, con rm the
suspicion of those who do not nd the transformation phenomenon
entirely compatible with the spirit of apriority.
V Conclusion
E arlier I pointed out that the dispute has lost its focus, resulting in a situ-
ation in which the disputants seem to be talking at cross purpo ses. O ur
survey of the eld seems to have provided us with ample support for
this conclusion. A s we have seen, one camp uses the expr ession ‘a priori’
one way – as that which is positively and negatively independent of
experience – while the other camp uses the expression ‘a priori’ in a
different way – as that which is only positively independent. This suggests
that there is no real disagreement at all, and that the dispute is actually
about how one should use the expression ‘a priori’. I shall now end
the discussion by providing some methodological re ections about the
prospects for a positive characterization of a priori knowledge by
comparing it to a parallel attempt in the case of (empirical) knowledge.
In the case of knowledge, attempts at an analysis usually take the form
of a search for necessary and suf cient conditions by providing an explicit
intension to t its intuitive extension.20 We seem to have intuitions about
the intension of the concept of knowledge as well as intuitions about its
extension, that is to say about its ascription to certain cases as opposed
to others. If, after we have propose d an analysis, it turns out that it does
not t our doxastic practices, that will constitute a good reason for thinking
the analysis to be mistaken. The G ettier literature is replete with propo sed
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are suppo sed to apprehend these representations. There are also Platonists,
who, by contrast, tend to liken the process of intuition to sense percep-
tion. It is claimed that, when discovering mathematical truths, we come
into contact with the objects of mathematics, and the axioms (theorems)
‘force themselves upon us as being true’. Nothing, however, is said about
how we ‘perceive’ these abstract objects.
U nless these issues are resolved, we cannot suppose that there is a
faculty of intuition through which we form our mathematical or modal
beliefs. In the absence of some reliable information about the way this
faculty performs its tasks, we shall not be able to know whether we, or
others, have performed intuitions. It cannot, therefore, be claimed that
there is a faculty of intuition which confers a priori justi cation on the
beliefs it produces, and, consequently, its alleged produ cts cannot be taken
to constitute the intuitive extension of the concept of a priori against
which one could evaluate the proposed analyses of that concept.22 It is
because of these complications that the concept of a priori knowledge
seems to resist the kind of treatment that the concept of knowledge has
enjoyed in the G ettier literature.
Notes
1 I am indebted to Trenton Merricks, Tim Williamson and the anonymou s IJPS
referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
2 See Q uine, ‘Two D ogmas’ (1980), Kitcher (1983) and G oldman (1986) ,
pp. 299–302.
3 See Kripke (1980), E didin (1984, 1986), H ale (1987, ch. 6), Casullo (1988) ,
Summer eld (1991) and Plantinga (1993, ch. 6).
4 Kitcher (1983) .
5 Kripke (1980), p. 39.
6 Casullo (1988) , p. 190.
7 The terminology is due to Summer eld (1991) ; the distinction is essentially
Edidin’s distinction between forward-looking and backward-looking depen-
dence (see E didin (1984) ). Casullo’s arguments against WU T are discussed
below.
8 Summer eld (1991) , p. 43.
9 This is obviously related to the distinction between positive and negative
dependence. See Casullo (1988) .
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 205.
12 Audi (1993) , p. 108.
13 The modest apriorist might further add that the factors on which a belief
positively depends, unlike those on which it negatively depends, explain
why the cognizer holds that belief. But this does not help the apriorist for at
least two reasons. First, to characterize positive dependence in terms of what
the belief is based on is to commit oneself to the (controversial) causal/
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The fact that taking the alleged products of intuition as constituting the exten-
sion of the concept of a priori has proved to be quite problematic tips the
balance in favour of the sceptic who denies that there is a priori knowle dge.
It shows, contrary to the modest apriorist’s claim, that it is very dif cult to
establish that there are processes which satisfy his constraints on a priori
warrants.
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