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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'There is No A Priori (and reply)' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

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2 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
How could the mind have a link to the necessary character of reality? [Devitt]
     Full Idea: What non-experiential link to reality could support insights into its necessary character?
     From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 4)
     A reaction: The key to it, I think, is your theory of mind. If you are a substance dualist, then connecting to such deep things looks fine, but if you are a reductive physicalist then it looks absurdly hopeful.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori
Some knowledge must be empirical; naturalism implies that all knowledge is like that [Devitt]
     Full Idea: It is overwhelmingly plausible that some knowledge is empirical. The attractive thesis of naturalism is that all knowledge is; there is only one way of knowing.
     From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 1)
     A reaction: How many ways for us to know seems to depend on what faculties we have. We lump our senses together under a single heading. The arrival of data is not the same as the arrival of knowledge. I'm unconvinced that naturalists like me must accept this.