Search Results for 'presuppositions and the a priori (AK)'
An entirely new draft of an old paper, here. Comments would be nice. Here’s the introduction:
This paper is a brief plea for the relevance of linguistic phenomena (specifically, the phenomenon of semantic presupposition) to epistemological theorizing about the a priori. In particular, I propose, explain, defend, and apply the following constraint on knowability a priori [...]
I encounter all kinds of interesting but, I think, misguided objections to my endorsement of (AK).
(AK) For all Φ, p, q: if Φ expresses p and semantically presupposes q, then p is knowable a priori only if q is too.
In this post, I’ll present my favorite formulation of the argument for (AK). I’ll start by [...]
I suppose the fact that I think it is easier to get examples of deeply contingent a priori knowledge than of superficially contingent a priori knowledge puts me in the minority. Anyway, Hawthorne (in “Deeply Contingent A Priori Knowledge”) cites Evans’ Julius case as a paradigm example of superficially contingent a priori knowledge:
(E) ∃!x(x invented [...]
In personal correspondence, Anders has objected to (AK) by arguing that it rules out the a priori knowability of (6)-(11).
(6) Cicero is Cicero.
(7) Unicorns are unicorns.
(8) Tigers are tigers.
(9) Bachelors are unmarried.
(10) Stallions are horses.
(11) The shortest [...]
Here is a final, more purely epistemological, argument in favor of (AK).
(AK) For any p, p is knowable a priori only if, for any presupposition q of p, q is knowable a priori.
(AK) is entailed by (α) and (β), each of which strike me as quite plausible:
(α) For any K and p, it [...]
In the previous post I argued that any presupposition q of some sentence expressing p is also an entailment of p. (Eric Swanson’s interesting comment notwithstanding.)
This can be directly levereged into an argument for (AK):
(AK) For any p, p is knowable a priori only if, for any presupposition q of p, q is knowable a [...]
The following principle strikes me as clearly true:
(AK) For any p, p is knowable a priori only if, for any presupposition q of p, q is knowable a priori.
It doesn’t strike others the same way (more on that later this week). So I’ve been looking around for some arguments in favor of (AK) and I [...]
