Abstract
According to the most popular account of the a priori, which we might call Analytic Account of the A Priori, we can explain the a priori in terms of the notion of analyticity. According to the least popular account of the a priori, the explanation of the a priori proceeds by appealing to the faculties used in the acquisition of a priori knowledge (or justification), such as the faculty of rational intuition – call this Rationalist Account of the A Priori. The main aim of this paper is to challenge the analytic account of the a priori to motivate a return to rationalism. To achieve this aim, I discuss and challenge two very different analytic accounts of the a priori: a concept-based account that relies on meaning-justification links, and an understanding-based account that does not rely on such links. I argue that the former is both extensionally inadequate and explanatorily deficient, and the latter can be made to work but only by employing such a rich notion of understanding that renders it a form of rationalism in disguise. I conclude by motivating a rationalist faculty-based account of the a priori.
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Notes
Traditionally, analyticity has been regarded as a property of meanings, but it has also been broadly understood as a property of truths. For ease of exposition, I will not sharply distinguish between sentences and truths, nor between meanings and concepts as nothing important for my purposes hangs on this.
Laurence Bonjour (1998) is one of few contemporary defenders of this type of rationalism.
This distinction is due to Boghossian (1997).
Russell (2008) is one of the few contemporary defenders of the notion.
See Piazza (2016) for an insightful discussion of Ayer’s conception of analyticity.
See Meeker (2011) for an interesting discussion of how Quine himself understood the analytic/synthetic distinction.
See Hunter (1997) for an argument to the effect that understanding is an a priori source of epistemic justification about what things mean.
Cf. Williamson (2007), Chap 4.
Peacocke (2004) endorses a similar principle, but crucially adds the further requirement of truth or truth-preservation of the possession conditions for a concept. More on this requirement of truth below.
Schechter and Enoch (2006) have also criticised Boghossian’s account. They focused mainly on the justification of rules of inference, and I want to extend the criticism to all cases of a priori knowledge. Although my criticisms are rather different from theirs, I owe a great deal to their most insightful discussion.
See, in particular, chapter 4. See also Williamson (2003).
Williamson (2003) argues that the nature of pejorative concepts is a matter of pragmatics, not semantics. There are good reasons to doubt this. In any case, even if we were to accept this way of ruling out boche, this strategy would not help with other concepts, such as the concepts flurg and aqua below.
Williamson (2003) also argues that aqua and flurg are not genuine concepts. However, his arguments depend on the rejection of the inferentialist thesis underpinning Boghossian’s account, something we have decided, for argument’s sake, to concede to Boghossian. My claim is that even if we accept this inferentialist account, we must still reject Boghossian’s account of the a priori. See, e. g., Schechter and Enoch (2006) for a criticism of Williamson’s arguments.
See Schechter and Enoch (2006, pp. 692–3) for a similar point.
Despite problems on how exactly to apply Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis account of theoretical terms to the case at hands, this should not concern us here. See Williamson (2003) for discussion.
One might dispute whether logical concepts cannot be conditionalized. Fortunately, we do not need to resolve these disputes for our purposes. See Williamson (2003) for more on this.
The Carnap sentence of T(boche) is: If there is a property P, such that if (if x German then x is P and if x is P then x is cruel) then (if x is German then x is boche and if x is boche then x is cruel).
Schechter and Enoch (2006) argue that Boghossian’s account does not provide the fundamental explanation for our knowledge of logic, as it appeals to other more fundamental normative principles, such as “a principle relating foreclosing on inquiry with blameworthiness, an ought-implies-can principle relating inability to act otherwise with blamelessness” (p.697), and other such principles. My objection, though different, is related.
One might wonder how someone can be competent at chess without holding any chess beliefs, such as the beliefs regarding the rules of chess-playing. But let us put this worry aside as it will be of little consequence.
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Acknowledgements
I presented this material at the LEME seminar (PPGLM) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. I thank the attendees for the feedback. I particularly remember helpful comments from Roberto Horácio, Guido Imaguire, Felipe Carijó, Dirk Greimann, Luisa Luze, Gustavo Lyra, and Rhamon de Oliveira (apologies if I’m forgetting anyone). I’m also grateful to the anonymous referee of this journal for the kind comments. Thanks specially to David Yates for comments on an early draft of this paper.
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Teixeira, C. Meaning, Understanding, and A Priori Knowledge. Philosophia 47, 901–916 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-9998-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-9998-1