A priori and a posteriori - philosophy

The terms a priori ("from the former") and a posteriori ("from the latter") are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example 'All bachelors are unmarried'); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example 'Some bachelors are very happy'). A priori justification makes reference to experience; but the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question—what justifies or grounds one's belief in it. Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."^[1] There are many points of view on these two types of assertion, and their relationship is one of the oldest problems in modern philosophy.

Additional info

A-series and B-series

A-series and B-series are terms introduced by the Scottish idealist philosopher John McTaggart in 1908 which have become classic terms of reference in modern discussions of the philosophy of time, even outside the analytic tradition.

A.J. Ayer

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer (29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), better known as A. J. Ayer or "Freddie" to friends, was a British philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

A Posteriori

A Posteriori is the title of the musical project Enigma's sixth studio album, released in September 2006. In December 2006, the album was nominated in the Best New Age Album category in the 2007 Grammy Awards.^[2]

A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)

The terms a priori ("from the former") and a posteriori ("from the latter") are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example 'All bachelors are unmarried'); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example 'Some bachelors are very happy'). A priori justification makes reference to experience; but the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question—what justifies or grounds one's belief in it. Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."^[1] There are many points of view on these two types of assertion, and their relationship is one of the oldest problems in modern philosophy.

A priori knowledge

The terms a priori ("from the former") and a posteriori ("from the latter") are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example 'All bachelors are unmarried'); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example 'Some bachelors are very happy'). A priori justification makes reference to experience; but the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question—what justifies or grounds one's belief in it. Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."^[1] There are many points of view on these two types of assertion, and their relationship is one of the oldest problems in modern philosophy.

Action (philosophy)

Action theory is an area in philosophy concerned with theories about the processes causing intentional (willful) human bodily movements of more or less complex kind. This area of thought has attracted the strong interest of philosophers ever since Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Third Book). With the advent of psychology and later neuroscience, many theories of action are now subject to empirical testing.

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent. Collectively, adjectives form one of the traditional English eight parts of speech, though linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such as determiners that also used to be considered adjectives.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (pronounced /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n]  ( listen); 14 March 1879–18 April 1955) was a theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time, and the "greatest physicist ever", according to a 1999 poll of leading physicists^[3]. His many contributions to physics include the special and general theories of relativity, the founding of relativistic cosmology, the first post-Newtonian expansion, explaining the perihelion advance of Mercury, prediction of the deflection of light by gravity and gravitational lensing, the first fluctuation dissipation theorem which explained the Brownian movement of molecules, the photon theory and wave-particle duality, the quantum theory of atomic motion in solids, the zero-point energy concept, the semiclassical version of the Schrödinger equation, and the quantum theory of a monatomic gas which predicted Bose–Einstein condensation.

Alethiology

Alethiology (or Alethology) literally means 'the study of truth', but can more accurately be translated as 'the study of the nature of truth'. It could be argued that this is synonymous with epistemology, the study of knowledge, and that dividing the two is mere semantics, but there is a distinction between the two. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and its acquisition. Alethiology is specifically concerned with the nature of truth, which is only one of the areas studied by epistemologists.

Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead, OM (February 15, 1861 – December 30, 1947) was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education. He co-authored the epochal Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell.

Alvin Goldman

Alvin Ira Goldman (born 1938) is an American professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He previously taught at the University of Michigan and at the University of Arizona. He earned his PhD from Princeton University and is married to Holly Smith, a well known ethicist, former administrator, and current professor at Rutgers University. He has done influential work on a wide range of philosophical topics, but his principal areas of research are epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Carl Plantinga (born 1932) is an American Christian philosopher, currently the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in Christian apologetics, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion, and in particular for applying the methods of analytic philosophy to defend orthodox Christian beliefs. Notably, he has argued that some people can know that God exists as a basic belief, requiring no justification, similar to how people usually claim to know that other minds exist. He has also argued that there is no logical inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, wholly-good god.^[1]

Analytic-synthetic distinction

The analytic-synthetic distinction, (also called the analytic-synthetic dichotomy), is a conceptual distinction, used primarily in philosophy to distinguish propositions into two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are those which are true simply by virtue of their meaning while synthetic propositions are not; however, philosophers have used the terms in very different ways. Furthermore, whether there is a legitimate distinction to be made has been widely debated among philosophers since Willard Van Orman Quine's critique of the distinction in his 1951 article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism".

Argument

In logic, an argument is a set of one or more meaningful declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the premises along with another meaningful declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the conclusion. A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises; an inductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is supported by the premises. Deductive arguments are valid or invalid, and sound or not sound. An argument is valid if and only if the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises and (consequently) its corresponding conditional is a necessary truth. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises.

Aristotle

Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings constitute a first at creating a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.