Sunday, May 4, 2008
A priori vs. A posteriori
In the first section of Proglegomena, Kant discusses the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge and how it shows the two possible sources of knowledge, the intellect and experience. He says that a priori means that we know something independently of observation and a posteriori means that we know something through observation. He claims that math is an excellent example of a priori knowledge since we can figure it out in our heads and nothing we experience can contradict this.
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2 comments:
how does the fact that we know at least the basic mathematical equations not come out of our experiences? please explain that to me? I would not know weather or not 2+2=4 is true if I didn't need to know it...
It seems to me that math itself is in some major way a product of our senses in the idea that we only know it because we need to know it to run our daily lives. Otherwise it is useless for us.
I think that you need to look at it slightly differently safi...i think that it means that it cannot be thought of in any other way. Also, as was pointed out in class, just because we ourselves were taught it, someone had to have come up with it originally without any outside assitance.
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