A priori & A posteriori

Scotland-Facebook-Travel+Leisure

Interesting discussion after main business hours at work where I emphasized that not all knowledge was empirical knowledge.

Here is edited Blogging and PhD material that is hopefully relevant.

Louis P. Pojman explains that the term a priori comes from the Latin “preceding” and is knowledge that is not based on sense experience but is innate or known to human beings by the meanings of words and definitions. Pojman (1996: 595).

Arthur Pap defines a priori knowledge as being independent of experience. Pap (1973: 666). 

Simon Blackburn notes that a proposition is knowable a priori if it can be known without experience of a certain set of events in the actual world. Blackburn allows for some experience to be obtained in order for a priori knowledge to occur. Blackburn (1996: 21).

He explains that this type of knowledge is very controversial and it is not clear how pure thought without the use of experience can lead to any true knowledge at all. Blackburn (1996: 21). Some empiricists have attempted to deny that any real knowledge can be obtained from a priori means. Blackburn (1996: 21).

In the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781 and revised in 1787, Kant explains that the forms of appearance from which sensations can be understood are not themselves the empirical sensations. Kant (1781)(1787)(1929)(2006: 66).

BonJour states that a priori knowledge is independent of empirical experience, meaning that something can be accepted as knowledge if it does not depend upon sensory experience. BonJour (1996: 29).

Very importantly in my view, BonJour explains that a deductively valid argument can use a priori reasoning, even if the correctness of the argument is challenged. BonJour (1996: 30). This would be very important for non-empirical reasoning in the areas of theology and philosophy in regard to the problem of evil and other topics, but even in other disciplines such as scientific theory where logical and reasonable deductions are at times made without empirical evidence. In other words, it is possible to deduce with logic, reason, and argumentation, truth, even without empirical evidence.

BonJour mentions that rationalists that state God exists are using a priori reasoning. I do not deny that human beings have presuppositions in the areas of knowledge, but I reason that experience and God given nature influences those concepts. It seems doubtful to me that human beings can have philosophical presuppositions without some innate understanding and experience to make sense of reality in order to presuppose.

It is also Biblical and reasonable to deduce that God creates human beings with certain innate understanding of reality that will be assisted by experience. Romans 1:19 explains that God made human beings with a natural understanding of his existence. Perhaps this would be a priori knowledge and would not exist entirely on human presuppositions. The existence of natural knowledge of God does not necessarily mean that human beings worship or obey God.

Edinburgh 1995

Pojman writes that a posteriori comes the Latin “the later” and is knowledge that is obtained from human sense experience only, as in the five senses. Pojman (1996: 595).

Blackburn reasons that something can be known a posteriori when it cannot be known a priori. Blackburn (1996: 21-22).

From a Christian perspective, God through Scriptural religious history and Jesus Christ has revealed himself to finite humanity in an effective, limited, empirical fashion, and this would be considered a posteriori knowledge of God, although God as pure spirit remains beyond the physical senses.

Kant criticized and limited the scope of traditional metaphysical thought, he also sought to defend against empiricism’s claim of the possibility of universal and necessary knowledge which he called a priori knowledge, because no knowledge derived from experience, a posteriori knowledge, could justify a claim to universal and necessary validity.

Guyer and Wood explain that Kant sought to defend the scientific approach to the acquisition of knowledge against skeptics that dismissed rigorous arguments in favor of ‘common sense.’ Guyer and Wood in Kant (1781)(1787)(1998: 2)

Kant concludes The Critique of Practical Reason by noting that the phenomena realm is the external realm where consciousness has existence.

The noumena realm is invisible and has true infinity where Kant believes one can reason that contingent personality is dependent on the universal and necessary connection to the invisible world. Kant (1788)(1898)(2006: 100).

Importantly Kant thought it legitimate for one to postulate the noumena realm in a ‘negative sense’ meaning things as they may be independently or how they are represented, but not noumena in the ‘positive sense’ which would be things based on pure reason alone. Instead, noumena categories were only useful by applying them to empirical data structured in forms of intuition.

The concept of noumena, according to Kant, was bound to the limit of pretension of sensibility and reason, and therefore only negative noumenon was of intellectual use. Noumena in its negative sense are that which is not an object of sense intuition. Kant rejects concepts of positive noumena based on pure reason. Kant (1781)(1787)(1998: 350).

Counter

Conclusion

Christian scholarship does not rely primarily on natural theology, which would be considered by certain scholars to simply use pure reason which some also think Kant had demolished. Revelation from God in Scripture and resulting claims made within could perhaps be tied to Kantian concepts and intuition arising from empirical sensations.

This is not a difficulty for a Reformed and some other approaches to Christianity, which do not rely primarily on philosophical deductions, but in supernatural revelation of God through empirical sensations, such as prophets, Christ, the apostles and scribes.

My conclusion here, which I realize some will debate, is that Scripture is not primarily metaphysical speculation about God as discussed, but is rather coming through the authors and players within his Bible, which are reasoned to be divinely guided by God. In other words: Natural theology, or another term, perhaps natural philosophy, at points can be reasonable philosophically as secondary support for theism and Christianity.

Natural theology does not reveal the God of the Bible specifically. Revelation and Scripture as historical religious history reveals the God of the Bible. Therefore, Christianity is not primarily based on metaphysical speculation or pure reason. 

BONJOUR, LAURENCE. (1996) ‘A Priori’, in Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) ‘A priori/A posteriori’, in Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 21-22. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

EDWARDS, PAUL AND ARTHUR PAP (1973) (eds), ‘A priori knowledge: Introduction’, A Modern Introduction To Philosophy, New York, The Free Press.

GUYER, PAUL AND ALLEN W, in KANT, IMMANUEL (1781)(1787)(1998) Critique of Pure Reason, Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

KANT, IMMANUEL (1781)(1787)(1998) Critique of Pure Reason, Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 

KANT, IMMANUEL (1781)(1787)(1929)(2006) Critique of Pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, London, Macmillan. KANT, IMMANUEL (1788)(1997) Critique of Practical Reason, Translated by Mary Gregor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

KANT, IMMANUEL (1788)(1898)(2006) The Critique of Practical Reason, Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, London, Longmans, Green, and Co.

KANT, IMMANUEL (1791)(2001) ‘On The Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy’, in Religion and Rational Theology, Translated by George di Giovanni and Allen Wood, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

POJMAN, LOUIS P. (1996) Philosophy: The Quest for Truth, New York, Wadsworth Publishing Company.