Capacity is not equivalent to achievement; so, no: the capacity to learn language is not knowledge. — Bitter Crank

Agreed, but maybe it's more complicated than that. Pinker and Chomsky think that grammar is inborn. If children learn a pidgin - a minimally grammatical mixture of several languages - they will turn it into a creole - a fully grammatical language. The example often used - in Nicaragua, they brought deaf children together into schools for the first time in the 1980s. Each child knew only informal signing they had figured out with their families. The second generation of students turned it into Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Even 1 year olds have accumulated too much to be called a blank slate. — Bitter Crank

The slate is not blank when we're born.

It's not entirely out of the question to say we have some instinctual knowledge, but because we are so knowledge acquisitive from the get go, it's hard to tell. — Bitter Crank

Which is one of the reasons I started this thread.

Monarch Butterflies aren't hatched out with on-board maps, but they apparently possess some sort of cueing system that tells them it's time to move south, and to maybe guide flight with an inborn pattern of light waves. A cueing system isn't knowledge. — Bitter Crank

Apparently monarchs use very specific routes to go from the northeastern US to south of Mexico City. There are specific locations with a particular type of tree where they go. It is my understanding that it is very hard to get a hotel room in those areas in the winter. Some groups of butterflies are forced to stay in Motel 6.

That is, your attempt to understand the synthetic a priori is being impacted by your evaluation of differing philosopher's views. — Hanover

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I'll try to make clear what makes sense to me. I'm with Hume, at least as I understand him based very limited experience. It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience. I don't see how that is different from what is called a posteriori knowledge.

You might do well to include institutional facts in your list. — Banno

I looked at the first post in your new thread. I'm not sure exactly how to deal with things that should be true, that we are obligated to think of as true. When I first started this thread, I thought about how how rights and morals would fit into the discussion. In particular, the American Declaration of Independence - We hold these truths to be self-evident. I avoided bringing it up specifically because I thought it would complicate and confuse things.

I'll pay attention to your thread and respond if I think I have anything to contribute.

Some small birds know to take hide if the overlying shape is hawk-like but cry out for food if it's a friendly shape. The animal forms are already known by the brain at birth. Which seems logical as the brain developed in that particular body. — Haglund

I agree.

That's not correct. Empirical knowledge is known a posteriori, not a priori.. The roots of those words, prior and post, reference how the knowledge is obtained: before or after experience.

You're conflating synthetic with a posteriori. Synthetic references a truth about the world, analytic a definitional truth. — Hanover

I've looked at 23 definitions, examples, and descriptions of synthetic a priori knowledge. People seem to be really confused about what it means, even if you are not. Here's something I got from a really great discussion of synthetic a priori knowledge by a professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University:

Hume didn’t use Kant’s terminology, but he did effectively say that we can have a priori knowledge only of a limited class of statements--statements whose negations are contradictions. All other kinds of statements can be known only on the basis of sense experience. The problem is that sense experience is insufficient for justifying many of the claims that philosophers (among others) have been wont to make. Hume’s explicit target is traditional “metaphysics,” as practiced by (what we now call) rationalist philosophers. Metaphysics, as a discipline, seems to be defined as a set of substantive claims (i.e., synthetic statements) that are purportedly known by reason alone, and not on the basis of sense experience. Hume’s conclusion is that all such work is mere sophistry, and that it should be “committed to the flames.” — Kent Baldner

A problem with "intuition" is that our brains (apparently) perform many functions which our conscious attention cannot observe. So, when we "sleep on a problem" we sometimes wake up with the solution in hand. Intuition? Or should we call it background mental processing?

Sometimes our reasoning is conscious and quite deliberate. Much of the time, it seems, whatever we call thinking and reasoning goes on through extensive unconscious operations working with decades of stored information. — Bitter Crank

Is this background mental processing the same thing as intuition? It certainly isn't reason as that is usually described, although I think most of what we call reason does take place behind the curtain.

Do babies "know" anything?

The neonatal brain is set up to acquire information, which it does immediately to a very limited degree. So, babies do not "know" who mama is until they have some good experience with mama, which one hopes happens post haste. In the days, weeks, and months that follow more information is acquired. — Bitter Crank

Baby ≠  Neonate. I don't know if neonates know anything. They do stuff. Do you have to know stuff to do stuff? That question has come up a couple of times so far in this discussion. Does a capacity to learn language constitute knowledge? Does an instinct or reflex to suck constitute knowledge? How about a natural tendency to be in interested in human faces or voices? Older babies certainly do know things.

My guess is that newborn animals come loaded with the equivalent of "read-only memory" that enables them to start acquiring necessary information from the start. Some knowledge, but not very much, is built in. — Bitter Crank

Human babies are certainly different from other young animals. Do the physical capabilities animals are born with constitute knowledge? Do migrating monarch butterflies have justified true belief?

It's a scientific dogma. On which Darwinian/Dawkinskian evolution is based. There also is an organism based version of evolution. Not popular though. It's Lamarckian evolution. — Haglund

As I said, I'm not ready to have this argument.

It is not known if the mutations are random or steered by the organism. — Haglund

I believe what you've written is not true, but I don't know enough to make an effective argument..

but infinite universe and finite universe are not equal theories. — SpaceDweller

I didn't say anything about infinity. I said that, perhaps, the universe has always been here and always will be. I think that way of seeing things and it's opposite are equal in that they are unverifiable.

If someone says you don't understand, that is not an ad hominem argument. It's not even an insult.
— T Clark

It is. — Jackson

Nunh unh. You should look it up.

You don't understand?
— chiknsld

Please refrain from ad hominems. — Jackson

If someone says you don't understand, that is not an ad hominem argument. It's not even an insult.

My own view is that I have no grounds to accept the proposition that once there was nothing - nothing can't even be defined. — Tom Storm

I have no problem conceiving, maybe imagining is a better word, that the universe, however you define it, has always been here and always will be. That it has no beginning and no end. Is that true? Who cares if it allows us to ignore the uncreated creator question.

My new philosophical position, a modification of Occam's razor - When you have two equal theories about some aspect of reality, choose the one that is less annoying.

It's a dogma, an unproven conjecture, that evolution progresses by accidental mutations of the genes. There is zero evidence that this is generally the case — Haglund

It is my understanding that mechanisms of genetic change other than random mutations have been identified. That doesn't mean there isn't evidence of evolution being caused by mutations.

Then explain what you meant by babies are aware of quantity — Harry Hindu

They are aware of quantities of things.

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There seems to be disagreement about what kind of knowledge math is. As I noted in a previous post, there are studies that show that very young children, babies, are aware of quantity, so there seems to be some inborn "knowledge" of math. On the other hand, we have to learn how to use it.
— T Clark

Which is just another way of saying that conscious experience is quantifiable, — Harry Hindu

What I wrote and what you wrote don't seem to me to be the same thing.

I think examples might help. — Haglund

The example I gave previously is causality. Some people believe that all events have causes and they know this as an a priori truth.

It's not exactly clear though what you mean about a priori knowledge and what kind of knowledge you refer to. You give a lot of definitions from the web, but its still somewhat unclear to me. — Haglund

The purpose of this thread is to thrash this out among ourselves. I'm doing the best I can to be clear, but some vagueness and confusion is to be expected.

It's design, true. But you need to know in advance if your design won't crumble on construction. In other words, you have to know in advance, a priori, what the new construction must be about, more or less. Of course you have seen trees over a river, but to base your bridge on a fallen tree... There has to be, somewhat vague still, premeditated knowledge of some sort. Your design will influence your knowledge and vice-versa. True, some based on previous encounters, but new a priori too (which may turn out good or bad, like the resonating of the bridge. — Haglund

We're not getting anywhere with this. You and I are talking about different things with the same words.

Don't you somehow construct it mentally first? Don't you need a priori knowledge of the bridge you construct first? — Haglund

That's design, not a priori knowledge. Design is applying principles I've learned elsewhere to a new situation.

If we know nothing, we still have self conscience and awareness — SpaceDweller

I think that's probably not true.

It seems self-evident to me that knowing things and asking "how do we know things?" are qualitatively different. — jamalrob

Do I agree with that?.....I guess I don't. From a pragmatic point of view, the purpose of knowledge is to direct how we take action. If that's true, you can't separate knowing things from knowing how we know them. Or have I misunderstood what you wrote?

Grouping all of this stuff under the same term is surely just a historical artifact. Just say no to epistemology. — jamalrob

Epistemology is why I'm on the forum. It is philosophy to me. It's the underlying theme of most of what I've written here and most of what I think about when I'm really thinking.

You think the innate concept of quantity, undeniably present in animals, is an innate knowledge of math? — Haglund

Quantity is number. You can't do most math without numbers. So, yes. That doesn't mean there aren't learned parts.

Construct zillions of relationships between them. That evolves. Giving a priori knowledge of the world. Einstein never saw curved spacetime. He had a priori knowledge of black holes. A baby has a lot of instinctive knowledge about the world when pooped in it. It has too. Without a priori, tacit, instinctive, intuitive, knowledge, necessarily vague still, it won't be possible to continue living — Haglund

I don't think all the types of knowledge you've listed are necessarily the same thing.

Well, this is something like what we are doing in philosophy, rather than what people are doing when they come to know things. It's what some philosophers do when they're trying to work out what knowledge is. — jamalrob

This suggests you understood the process to be one that's proposed to be undertaken by people generally, when they come to know things, and not as part of philosophical examination. — jamalrob

I don't really make much of a distinction between what we do in philosophy as opposed to what we do in life. In philosophy we try to be more careful. More formal. But, to me, the processes are the same.

I'm saying that you gotta have a priori knowledge of something you gonna construct. — Haglund

That doesn't make sense to me.

I think maybe you're overusing the word "instinct." I've been using it in ways that might not be accurate too. I'm going to check. Here are some definitions from the web:

[1] An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.
[2] A powerful motivation or impulse.
[3] An innate capability or aptitude.
[4] The inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing both innate (inborn) and learned elements.

Looks like the meaning is broad enough to take in all the ways we're using it. I think I was unclear, even to myself, how I was using it.

Let's take 2+2=4. What type of knowledge is knowing 2+2=4? How do you know that 2+2=4? — Harry Hindu

Is knowing that 2+2=4 knowing what 2+2=4 is about, or how to use or apply to real-life experiences, or a representation of real-life experiences of quantifying and counting experienced objects? It seems that knowing that 2+2=4 is experiencing two of something and another two of something becoming four of something. In other words, 2+2=4 is only meaningful if it can be applied to, or representative of, experience of counting real-world things which are not numbers themselves, just as words are not meaningful if not applied to real-world things that are not words themselves. — Harry Hindu

There seems to be disagreement about what kind of knowledge math is. As I noted in a previous post, there are studies that show that very young children, babies, are aware of quantity, so there seems to be some inborn "knowledge" of math. On the other hand, we have to learn how to use it.

I’ve never seen justified true belief described as a process before. It’s just an observation (in the Theaetetus) of what we often mean when we speak of knowing, viz., something we believe, that is true and justified. — jamalrob

I've always thought of it as a process, like a checklist. It's true - check. It's justified - check. I believe it - check. Ding, ding, ding - It's knowledge. I don't think it matters whether we see it that way or not. It's the whole concept I don't like. It seems like a totally unrealistic description of how we really know things and how we use the things we know.

Some would argue that this type of thinking doesn't belong on a philosophy forum. — Noble Dust

You can't talk epistemology without talking intuition, no matter what anyone says.

Does a bird which migrates south for the first time in its life use a priori knowledge to get there, or are they just copying the others? — Tom Storm

It's instinct, so I guess, yes, that is analytic a priori knowledge. Maybe not the impulse to fly south but at least the knowledge of how to get where their going. Salmon aren't shown the location of their spawning grounds. They just know it. I don't know if there are many, if any, things people know like that.

But they never saw the first bridge built. — Haglund

This is getting silly. Are you saying the only way I could have an original idea is a priori? I can't take things I've learned and put them together in a new way?

Same. I've argued (badly) for intuition over the years here, but I eventually realized it's self-evident that the vast majority of people in the world use intuition primarily, and it's only the smaller minority of analytically-minded people who would bother to join a philosophy forum that deride it's primacy. — Noble Dust

I remember you and me being on the same side of this argument in previous threads.

Then it becomes a twofold question of 1) are the vast majority of people deluded and only a select few understand how truth is obtained, and 2) alternatively, is this criticism of intuition just a prejudice of the intelligent against the less intelligent? And where does that path logically lead? The ivory tower is tall indeed. — Noble Dust

I find it hard to understand how people can believe they know most of the things they do by justified true belief baloney or some other mechanical process. We get most of the knowledge we have by falling out of trees, running through the woods, listening to other people, playing with dogs, swimming, hanging around with other kids...

But if there were no bridges before they we're built, you must have had knowledge to build it. How can't that be a priori? — Haglund

This is an oversimplified story, a cartoon, but I'm sure people saw trees fallen across streams before we were homo sapiens.

Kant thought the bachelor example was analytic and math synthetic. — Gregory

Whatever Kant thought, I agree the bachelor example is analytic, but I'm not sure about math. Perhaps it's both.

You seem to think there exists no a priori knowĺedge. But correct me if I'm wrong. But if that's the case how can we anticipate unknown territory with which we don't have interacted? — Haglund

Two points - 1) Even if I'm not familiar with the particular landscape, I am familiar with landscapes in general. I'm also likely to move more carefully in an unfamiliar setting. 2) People from the city are probably more likely to fall off a cliff than someone who grew up in the mountains.

Don't you think Einstein's notion of spacetime is a priori constructed? — Haglund

If you mean constructed purely by deduction rather than by induction, then no.

Doesn't an engineer has synthetic a priori knowledge about the bridge? — Haglund

Yes. I said I had a pragmatic understanding of knowledge. I wouldn't call that a priori at all.

This is far truer of humans than other creatures. — apokrisis

Yes. Many animals have very complex behaviors that are transmitted genetically. Humans seem to have just a few instincts - sucking and maybe an attraction to human faces. I'm sure there are more. We also have reflexes. Most of what we have seems to be capacities - language, numbers, some aspects of morality.

I don't know whether the story you've told about how this developed evolutionarily is accurate. It's certainly true that humans are born less developed mentally. Less able to take care of themselves. I don't know if this is the reason for our sociality. There are many non-human social animals. No need to go further on this. I don't know enough to argue effectively.

This is what Peirce fixed with his pragmatic theory of truth. He showed how reasoning involved this feedback loop of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation. — apokrisis

My take on knowledge and how we know things is very pragmatic. That's one of the reasons I ended up becoming an engineer.

When children learn mathematics they learn a synthetic skill, not an analytic one. Sure they start out counting the numbers but even this is not analytic
for them sincr ultimately they are to develope a synthetic skill (as Kant pointed out). Synthetic ability is dum da dum creative intelligence! — Gregory

Does that mean that riding a bike is synthetic a priori knowledge? I certainly would not have said so.

This thread is an example of the creative mentality while analytic thought is usually defined as finding meanings to language instead of combining words to form a new synthesis — Gregory

I don't see how learning a language can be only analytic a priori knowledge.

And yet knowledge is pragmatically a matter of experience. We develop habits of future expectation based on a history of past events. — apokrisis

That is how I see it.

So speaking of "knowledge", or "truth", or "facts", has this unfortunate tendency to push it all into some Platonic realm of surety quite separate from the uncertain world. The truth "exists" in some eternal present. — apokrisis

This is what I think of when I hear "a priori." It is how it is often used.

Sure, it is useful also to take this kind of deductive approach to knowledge/truth/facts. We can abduct to make some general guess about what could be the past, and thus possibly be the future. From this hypothesis, we can then deduce the observable consequences.

That is, we can deduce the counterfactuals. We can figure out what we ought to see in the future if our guess is indeed right ... and thus also discover if what we guessed instead seems more like a wrong hypothesis.

The last bit - the checking of the predictions to confirm/deny the deductive argument - is the inductive confirmation. The more times the theory works, the more justified becomes our belief that it must be true. — apokrisis

I think I see what you're saying, but that seems like an odd use of the term "a priori." If I think A will happen based on my experience with the world, then I know if B happens, that I was wrong. It seems like people use the term to mean they don't have to perform the confirmation step.

Deduction - as abstract syntax - works when firmly anchored in the pragmatism of learning from the world so as to be able to live in that world. But knowledge, truth and facts aren't literally the objects of some other world. — apokrisis

As I said, some people at least use "a priori" to mean that there are things we can know about the world without justification. The recent example I think of is from our discussion about causation. Many people would say that the fact that everything has a cause is obvious.