display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
10 ideas
| 8259 | Kripke has breathed new life into the a priori/a posteriori distinction [Kripke, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The a priori/a posteriori is still taken seriously, and has had new life breathed into it by the work of Saul Kripke. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 1.1 | |
| A reaction: The distinction may be a good one, despite a blurred borderline. Did Egyptian quantity surveyors begin to suspect that Pythagoras's Theorem was a necessary truth, though they couldn't prove it? A priori understanding creeps into experience. |
| 16989 | Rather than 'a priori truth', it is best to stick to whether some person knows it on a priori evidence [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A priori is supposed to mean something which can be known independently of experience, …but possible for whom? God, or the Martians? …Instead of 'a priori truth' it is best to stick to whether some person knows it based on a priori evidence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is Kripke's famous attempt to establish that 'a priori' is strictly an epistemological term, and should not be taken as a term of metaphysics (or modal semantics?). I definitely prefer the Kripke view, though it downgrades the a priori. |
| 4947 | A priori truths can be known independently of experience - but they don't have to be [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The traditional characterisation (since Kant) goes: a priori truths are those which can be known independently of any experience - ..but that doesn't mean they MUST be known a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You may discover through experience that nine matches can't be divided into two equal piles, but Leibniz (and others) say you will only see the necessity of this a priori. No necessity is visible in the matches. |
| 5198 | We could verify 'a thing can't be in two places at once' by destroying one of the things [Ierubino on Ayer] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to challenge the proposition 'a material thing cannot be in two places at once' empirically; if you destroy one object, the other should also instantly be destroyed if they are a single thing. | |
| From: comment on A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) by Virgil Ierubino - works | |
| A reaction: This leaves us having to decide whether the proposition is metaphysically necessary, or is empirical, or is tautological. This idea inclines me towards the view that it is empirical. Imagine two 'separate' objects which responded identically to stimuli. |
| 2619 | Whether geometry can be applied to reality is an empirical question outside of geometry [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Whether a geometry can be applied to the actual physical world or not, is an empirical question which falls outside the scope of the geometry itself. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a key objection to rationalism by empiricists. You may say that geometry applies to your car, but your car may have been pulverised while you were talking. Why, though, did Einstein find non-Euclidean geometry so useful? |
| 5197 | By changing definitions we could make 'a thing can't be in two places at once' a contradiction [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that 'a material thing cannot be in two places at once' is not empirical at all, but linguistic; ..we could so alter our definitions that the proposition came to express a self-contradiction instead of a necessary truth. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems a striking anticipation of Quine's famous challenge to the analytic/synthetic distinction. |
| 17052 | The a priori analytic truths involving fixing of reference are contingent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If statements whose a priori truth is known via the fixing of a reference are counted as analytic, then some analytic truths are contingent. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity notes and addenda [1972], note 63) |
| 13975 | Kripke was more successful in illuminating necessity than a priority (and their relations to analyticity) [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke was far more successful in illuminating the nature of necessity, and distinguishing it from both apriority and analyticity, than he was in illuminating the nature of apriority, and distinguishing that from analyticity. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.187 |
| 17048 | Analytic judgements are a priori, even when their content is empirical [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: All analytic judgements are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, 'Gold is a yellow metal'; for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: So I relate a priori to 'turquoise is a shade of red', even though my concepts are confused? It is my concept, perhaps, but it is false. I thought a priori had something to do with knowing, not with reporting the confused nonsense in my mind? |
| 5204 | To say that a proposition is true a priori is to say that it is a tautology [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: To say that a proposition is true a priori is to say that it is a tautology. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (Language,Truth and Logic [1936], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is Ayer's splendidly clearcut anti-rationalism. However, one might concede that one cannot know a priori about remote possible worlds (though I'm not so sure), but still claim a priori extrapolations from our current experiences. |