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("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
phrases used in
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some s ...
to distinguish types of
knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
, justification, or
argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current
experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
(e.g., as part of a new study). Examples include mathematics,Some
associationist Associationism is the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one mental state with its successor states. It holds that all mental processes are made up of discrete psychological elements and their combinations, which are believed ...
philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any a priori knowledge ()
tautologies, and deduction from
pure reason Speculative reason, sometimes called theoretical reason or pure reason, is theoretical (or logical, deductive) thought, as opposed to practical (active, willing) thought. The distinction between the two goes at least as far back as the ancient Gr ...
.
Galen Strawson Galen John Strawson (born 1952) is a British analytic philosopher and literary critic who works primarily on philosophy of mind, metaphysics (including free will, panpsychism, the mind-body problem, and the self), John Locke, David Hume, Imman ...
has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is
true True most commonly refers to truth, the state of being in congruence with fact or reality. True may also refer to: Places * True, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in the United States * True, Wisconsin, a town in the United States * ...
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." ()
knowledge depends on
empirical evidence Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
. Examples include most fields of
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in ''
Organon The ''Organon'' ( grc, Ὄργανον, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics. The six ...
'', a collection of works by Aristotle.
Prior analytics The ''Prior Analytics'' ( grc-gre, Ἀναλυτικὰ Πρότερα; la, Analytica Priora) is a work by Aristotle on reasoning, known as his syllogistic, composed around 350 BCE. Being one of the six extant Aristotelian writings on logic ...
() is about
deductive logic Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false ...
, which comes from definitions and first principles.
Posterior analytics The ''Posterior Analytics'' ( grc-gre, Ἀναλυτικὰ Ὕστερα; la, Analytica Posteriora) is a text from Aristotle's '' Organon'' that deals with demonstration, definition, and scientific knowledge. The demonstration is distinguishe ...
() is about
inductive logic Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a general principle is derived from a body of observations. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from ''deductive'' rea ...
, which comes from observational evidence. Both terms appear in
Euclid Euclid (; grc-gre, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the ''Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of ge ...
's ''
Elements Element or elements may refer to: Science * Chemical element, a pure substance of one type of atom * Heating element, a device that generates heat by electrical resistance * Orbital elements, parameters required to identify a specific orbit of o ...
'' and were popularized by
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...
's '' Critique of Pure Reason'', an influential work in the
history of philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some s ...
. Both terms are primarily used as
modifiers In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", prov ...
to the
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
"knowledge" (i.e. " knowledge"). can be used to modify other nouns such as "truth". Philosophers may use ''apriority'', ''apriorist'', and ''aprioricity'' as nouns referring to the quality of being .


Examples


''A priori''

Consider the
proposition In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
: "If
George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. Born during the reign of his grandmother Quee ...
reigned at least four days, then he reigned more than three days." This is something that one knows ''a priori'' because it expresses a statement that one can derive by reason alone.


''A posteriori''

Consider the proposition: "George V reigned from 1910 to 1936." This is something that (if true) one must come to know ''a posteriori'' because it expresses an empirical fact unknowable by reason alone.


Aprioricity, analyticity, and necessity


Relation to the analytic-synthetic

Several philosophers, in reaction to
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...
, sought to explain ''a priori'' knowledge without appealing to, as Paul Boghossian explains, "a special faculty ntution��that has never been described in satisfactory terms." One theory, popular among the
logical positivists Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion o ...
of the early 20th century, is what Boghossian calls the "analytic explanation of the a priori." The distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions was first introduced by Kant. While his original distinction was primarily drawn in terms of conceptual containment, the contemporary version of such distinction primarily involves, as American philosopher
W. V. O. Quine W. may refer to: * SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel * ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush * "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 1992 EP ''Bar ...
put it, the notions of "true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact." Analytic propositions are thought to be true in virtue of their meaning alone, while ''a posteriori'' propositions are thought to be true in virtue of their meaning ''and'' of certain facts about the world. According to the analytic explanation of the ''a priori'', all ''a priori'' knowledge is analytic; so ''a priori'' knowledge need not require a special faculty of pure
intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
, since it can be accounted for simply by one's ability to understand the meaning of the proposition in question. More simply, proponents of this explanation claimed to have reduced a dubious
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
faculty of pure reason to a legitimate linguistic notion of analyticity. The analytic explanation of ''a priori'' knowledge has undergone several criticisms. Most notably, Quine argues that the analytic–synthetic distinction is illegitimate:
But for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith.
While the soundness of Quine's critique is highly disputed, it had a powerful effect on the project of explaining the ''a priori'' in terms of the analytic.


Relation to the necessary truths and contingent truths

The metaphysical distinction between ''necessary'' and ''contingent'' truths has also been related to ''a priori'' and ''a posteriori'' knowledge. A proposition that is
necessarily true Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic. Broadly speaking, a logical truth is a statement which is true regardless of the truth or falsity of its constituent propositions. In other words, a logical truth is a statement whic ...
is one in which its negation is self-contradictory. Furthermore, it is said to be true in every
possible world A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their me ...
. For example, considering the proposition "all bachelors are unmarried:" its negation (i.e. the proposition that some bachelors are married) is incoherent due to the concept of being unmarried (or the meaning of the word "unmarried") being tied to part of the concept of being a bachelor (or part of the definition of the word "bachelor"). To the extent that contradictions are impossible, self-contradictory propositions are necessarily false as it is impossible for them to be true. The negation of a self-contradictory proposition is, therefore, supposed to be necessarily true. By contrast, a proposition that is contingently true is one in which its negation is not self-contradictory. Thus, it is said ''not'' to be true in every possible world. As Jason Baehr suggests, it seems plausible that all necessary propositions are known ''a priori'', because " nse experience can tell us only about the actual world and hence about what is the case; it can say nothing about what must or must not be the case." Following Kant, some philosophers have considered the relationship between ''aprioricity'', ''analyticity'', and ''necessity'' to be extremely close. According to
Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modul ...
, "
positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
, in particular, took it for granted that ''a priori'' truths must be necessary." However, since Kant, the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions has slightly changed. Analytic propositions were largely taken to be "true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact," while synthetic propositions were not—one must conduct some sort of empirical investigation, looking to the world, to determine the
truth-value In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (''true'' or '' false''). Computing In some progr ...
of synthetic propositions.


Aprioricity, analyticity and necessity

Aprioricity, analyticity, and necessity have since been more clearly separated from each other. American philosopher
Saul Kripke Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emeri ...
(1972), for example, provides strong arguments against this position, whereby he contends that there are necessary ''a posteriori'' truths. For example, the proposition that water is H2O (if it is true): According to Kripke, this statement is both ''necessarily true'', because water and H2O are the same thing, they are identical in every possible world, and truths of identity are logically necessary; and ''a posteriori'', because it is known only through empirical investigation. Following such considerations of Kripke and others (see
Hilary Putnam Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
), philosophers tend to distinguish the notion of aprioricity more clearly from that of necessity and analyticity. Kripke's definitions of these terms, however, diverge in subtle ways from those of Kant. Taking these differences into account, Kripke's controversial analysis of naming as contingent and ''a priori'' would, according to
Stephen Palmquist Stephen Richard Palmquist (born 1957) is an American philosopher, currently living in Los Angeles. He taught philosophy at various universities in Hong Kong from 1987 to 2021. A Patheos article referred to him as "one of the greatest living inter ...
, best fit into Kant's epistemological framework by calling it "analytic a posteriori."In this pair of articles, Stephen Palmquist demonstrates that the context often determines how a particular proposition should be classified. A proposition that is synthetic ''a posteriori'' in one context might be analytic ''a priori'' in another. ()
Aaron Sloman Aaron Sloman is a philosopher and researcher on artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He held the Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, and before that ...
presented a brief defence of Kant's three distinctions (analytic/synthetic, apriori/empirical, and necessary/contingent), in that it did not assume "possible world semantics" for the third distinction, merely that some part of ''this'' world might have been different. The relationship between aprioricity, necessity, and analyticity is not found to be easy to discern. However, most philosophers at least seem to agree that while the various distinctions may overlap, the notions are clearly not identical: the ''a priori''/''a posteriori'' distinction is
epistemological Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...
; the analytic/synthetic distinction is
linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
; and the necessary/contingent distinction is
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
., §2-3


History


Early uses

The term ''a priori'' is
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
for 'from what comes before' (or, less literally, 'from first principles, before experience'). In contrast, the term ''a posteriori'' is
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
for 'from what comes later' (or 'after experience'). They appear in Latin translations of
Euclid Euclid (; grc-gre, Εὐκλείδης; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the ''Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of ge ...
's ''
Elements Element or elements may refer to: Science * Chemical element, a pure substance of one type of atom * Heating element, a device that generates heat by electrical resistance * Orbital elements, parameters required to identify a specific orbit of o ...
'', a work widely considered during the early European modern period as the model for precise thinking. An early philosophical use of what might be considered a notion of ''a priori'' knowledge (though not called by that name) is
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, wikt:Πλάτων, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greeks, Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thou ...
's ''theory of recollection'', related in the dialogue ''
Meno ''Meno'' (; grc-gre, Μένων, ''Ménōn'') is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue is taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature. In order to determine whether virtue is teachable ...
'', according to which something like ''a priori'' knowledge is knowledge inherent,
intrinsic In science and engineering, an intrinsic property is a property of a specified subject that exists itself or within the subject. An extrinsic property is not essential or inherent to the subject that is being characterized. For example, mass ...
in the human mind.
Albert of Saxony en, Frederick Augustus Albert Anthony Ferdinand Joseph Charles Maria Baptist Nepomuk William Xavier George Fidelis , image = Albert of Saxony by Nicola Perscheid c1900.jpg , image_size = , caption = Photograph by Nicola Persc ...
, a 14th-century logician, wrote on both ''a priori'' and ''a posteriori''. The early modern Thomistic philosopher John Sergeant differentiates the terms by the direction of inference regarding proper causes and effects. To demonstrate something ''a priori'' is to "Demonstrate Proper Effects from Proper Efficient Causes" and likewise to demonstrate ''a posteriori'' is to demonstrate "Proper Efficient Causes from Proper Effects", according to his 1696 work '' The Method to Science'' Book III, Lesson IV, Section 7. G. W. Leibniz introduced a distinction between ''a priori'' and ''a posteriori'' criteria for the possibility of a notion in his (1684) short treatise "Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas". ''A priori'' and ''a posteriori'' arguments for the existence of God appear in his ''
Monadology The ''Monadology'' (french: La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works of his later philosophy. It is a short text which presents, in some 90 paragraphs, a metaphysics of simple substances, or '' monads''. Text Dur ...
'' (1714).
George Berkeley George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immate ...
outlined the distinction in his 1710 work ''
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge ''A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (commonly called ''Treatise'') is a 1710 work, in English, by Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. This book largely seeks to refute the claims made by Berkeley's contemporary ...
'' (para. XXI).


Immanuel Kant

The 18th-century German philosopher
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...
(1781) advocated a blend of rationalist and
empiricist In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiri ...
theories. Kant says, "Although all our cognition begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from
s caused by S, or s, is the nineteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ess'' (pronounced ), plural ''esses''. Histor ...
experience." According to Kant, ''a priori'' cognition is transcendental, or based on the ''form'' of all possible experience, while ''a posteriori'' cognition is empirical, based on the ''content'' of experience:
It is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself sensuous impressions
ense data Ense () is a municipality in the district of Soest, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Ense is situated on the river Möhne, approx. 12 km north-west of Arnsberg and 12 km south-west of Soest. Ense lies at the northside of ...
giving merely the ''occasion'' pportunity for a cause to produce its effect
Contrary to contemporary usages of the term, Kant believes that ''a priori'' knowledge is not entirely independent of the content of experience. Unlike the
rationalists In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'' ...
, Kant thinks that ''a priori'' cognition, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience. These ''a priori'', or transcendental conditions, are seated in one's cognitive faculties, and are not provided by experience in general or any experience in particular (although an argument exists that ''a priori'' intuitions can be "triggered" by experience). Kant nominated and explored the possibility of a transcendental logic with which to consider the deduction of the ''a priori'' in its pure form.
Space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...
,
time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...
and
causality Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the ca ...
are considered pure ''a priori'' intuitions. Kant reasoned that the pure ''a priori'' intuitions are established via his transcendental aesthetic and transcendental logic. He claimed that the human subject would not have the kind of experience that it has were these ''a priori'' forms not in some way constitutive of him as a human subject. For instance, a person would not experience the world as an orderly, rule-governed place unless time, space and causality were determinant functions in the form of perceptual faculties, i. e., there can be no experience in general without space, time or causality as particular determinants thereon. The claim is more formally known as Kant's transcendental deduction and it is the central argument of his major work, the '' Critique of Pure Reason''. The transcendental deduction argues that time, space and causality are ideal as much as real. In consideration of a possible logic of the ''a priori'', this most famous of Kant's deductions has made the successful attempt in the case for the fact of
subjectivity Subjectivity in a philosophical context has to do with a lack of objective reality. Subjectivity has been given various and ambiguous definitions by differing sources as it is not often the focal point of philosophical discourse.Bykova, Marina F ...
, what constitutes subjectivity and what relation it holds with objectivity and the empirical.


Johann Fichte

After Kant's death, a number of philosophers saw themselves as correcting and expanding his philosophy, leading to the various forms of
German Idealism German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionar ...
. One of these philosophers was
Johann Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kan ...
. His student (and critic),
Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
, accused him of rejecting the distinction between ''a priori'' and ''a posteriori'' knowledge:


See also

* A priori probability *
Ab initio ''Ab initio'' ( ) is a Latin term meaning "from the beginning" and is derived from the Latin ''ab'' ("from") + ''initio'', ablative singular of ''initium'' ("beginning"). Etymology Circa 1600, from Latin, literally "from the beginning", from abl ...
*
Abductive reasoning Abductive reasoning (also called abduction,For example: abductive inference, or retroduction) is a form of logical inference formulated and advanced by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce beginning in the last third of the 19th centur ...
*
Deductive reasoning Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false ...
*
Inductive reasoning Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a general principle is derived from a body of observations. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from ''deductive'' rea ...
*
Off the verandah Off the verandah (alt. spelling off the veranda; longer, come down off the verandah) is a phrase often attributed to anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who stressed the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life ...
* Relativized a priori *
Tabula rasa ''Tabula rasa'' (; "blank slate") is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of ''tabula rasa'' disagree with the doctr ...
*
Transcendental empiricism Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
*
Transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology Phenomenology (from Greek φαινόμενον, ''phainómenon'' "that which appears" and λόγος, ''lógos'' "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded i ...
*
Transcendental nominalism Ian MacDougall Hacking (born February 18, 1936) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in the philosophy of science. Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been a ...


References


Notes


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * . * * * * * * * * * *


External links

* * * *
A priori / a posteriori
— in the Philosophical Dictionary online.
"Rationalism vs. Empiricism"
— an article by Peter Markie in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. {{DEFAULTSORT:A Priori and a Posteriori Concepts in epistemology Conceptual distinctions Critical thinking Critical thinking skills Empiricism Justification (epistemology) Kantianism Latin logical phrases Latin philosophical phrases Mental processes Philosophical logic Philosophical theories Philosophy of logic Philosophy of mind Rationalism Reality Sources of knowledge Subjective experience Term logic Thought