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.

Deleted

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.

But 2 plus 2 is four and there is a process there which is more than finding new words. — Gregory

I thought that all mathematics is considered analytic a priori knowledge. That might make a certain amount of sense. There are studies showing that babies have a sense of number at a very early age.

So there are linguistic skills learned analytically and processes learn synthetically, both being different in *how* humans learn them. — Gregory

Are you saying that language is analytic a priori knowledge. It is pretty well established that very young children have an apparently hardwired ability to learn language. I guess we could call that analytic, although I'm not sure it makes sense to call a capacity knowledge. It's also true that children who are never exposed to language at a young age will never develop it, even if they are exposed at a latter time.

That's an example of an analytic truth, not synthetic. The value is that it is definitional. It tells you what a bachelor is. — Hanover

Sorry. That sentence was a non-sequitur. I was talking about synthetic a priori knowledge and then switched to analytic. I didn't know the distinction between the two types of knowledge when I read @Tom Storm's post, so I looked it up. It seems useless. Synthetic knowledge is nothing but regular old empirical knowledge and analytic knowledge is trivial. People wave a priori knowledge around like it's a magic wand, but it's just fancy words for regular old stuff.

I would be interested to hear what others have to say about a priori - and synthetic a priori. There may be space in this discussion to explore the idea of properly basic beliefs. These are all part of a foundationalist view of reality. — Tom Storm

Let me see if I have this straight - synthetic a priori means "makes sense, but I'd better check." That's fine, but it's not usually how people use the term in philosophy. At least not on the forum. It's generally used to mean that it's so obvious that it doesn't need to be justified. Sometimes even more than that - that it is somehow woven into the very structure of reality. Which is what this whole thread is about.

What is the value of knowing that all bachelors are unmarried?

I think introspection is a valid form of empirical knowledge.
— T Clark
But introspection illusions, no? — 180 Proof

Can intuition be wrong? Of course it can. Does that mean it isn't valuable. Of course it doesn't. One thing intuition is very good for is setting off alarms when you hear something that doesn't fit. That happens to me all the time. When I go to check, I'm usually right. How good is intuition as justification for action? It depends on the consequences of failure. I'll bet a buck I'm right. Sure. Seems like a good idea, I'll put my lifesavings on it. Probably not.

Our intuitions are not there for the purpose of truth. That's a pretty easy one to figure out if you think about it. — noAxioms

Babies have to build their own worlds. They have to take in all the sensory information they gather and process it through neurological and mental mechanisms of their minds and use it to construct a model of how the world works. As we grow, the model increases in complexity and scope. This is my understanding based on introspection and reading authors such as Stephen Pinker, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Karen Wynn.

In my experience, most of what I know in the world is rapped up in that model. Most of what I know I know by intuition.

I can remember reading about the baby's retina aleady stimulating the brain with shapes. Don't ask me how they found out... Maybe you have seen it with your eyes closed. Concentric rings flowing in and outwards. Surely the bodily baby shape somehow projects in the baby brain. — Haglund

As I said, this makes sense to me.

Nothing. Knowledge takes the form of sensory data. — Harry Hindu

I agree, but many people don't.

Knowledge of god can't be empirical, although you can see them all around. — Haglund

I'm not a follower of any religion, so I may not be the right person to have an opinion on this. It has always seemed to be that religious faith is based on a human experience of something, something believers think of as God. I think introspection is a valid form of empirical knowledge.

The baby already has knowledge of the world without ever having walked in it. How can that be? The knowledge must have evolved already in the womb, with closed eyes. In a sense the baby is in the world 9 months. Structures in the brain, without halt, running around during evolving from nothing to baby size. Baby eyes sending patterns, brain reacting, balance, body sending formal information, baby brain reacting. Knowledge forming. No tabula rasa. Then we are thrown in. The world showing itself. The world projected in the fertile soil of the baby brain. — Haglund

This makes sense to me, although I don't know if there are studies about experiences babies pick up in the womb.

How does the baby dog know to go to mamma's nipples? The dog image or dog knowledge is already there a priori, contrary to the a priori knowledge of the goose. Smaller brain. — Haglund

It seems like you are making a distinction between baby humans and animals. It is my understanding that some of the baby's first reactions such as sucking are built-in, instinctual, unlearned, much as the animals are. I'm not even sure it makes sense to call it knowledge.

However, the actual translation of his ideas is potentially problematic, especially the idea of going beyond good and evil. What would this mean? It could be used to justify almost anything. — Jack Cummins

This idea shows up when discussing any issue about abandoning traditional values or the possibility of behaving in accordance with an inner voice. Look at the all the discussions we have on the forum about the possibilities of morality without God. It's the strongest criticism against one of my favorite philosophical works - Emerson's "Self-Reliance." I've also seen it as criticism of Taoism. Here's a profoundly radical quote from "Self-Reliance."

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. — Emerson