• a priori

    Date: 2009.11.07 | Category: Glossary, Unit SSK12 | Tags:

    Glossary
    Unit: SSK12
    Week: 7 (in Week 10)
    Date: 07 November 2009

    Word: a priori adj.
    Context: A priori appears in Grant’s (1997, 104) article: “The a priori Cartesian mind/body dualism…”. It also appears in The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (2000) definition of proposition: “as a priori or empirical…”
    Definition: The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought explains that knowledge is a posteriori when it is dependent upon evidence or our experience, while in contrast a priori knowledge is not bound by this dependence. It is commonly said that a priori is necessary and a posteriori is contingent (or dependent). Although there is much debate as to whether this is necessarily true, and that in fact there are cases of contingent knowledge, which can be called a priori and vice versa. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (2009) adds: “The proponents of a priori knowledge usually claim that we have a faculty of intuition by which we may ascertain the truth of a priori propositions”. It is in this sense that Grant is contrasting the intuitively produced mind/body and the discursively produced body/subject.
    Word in Use: If only women can have babies, and I am not a woman, then the a priori is that I cannot have babies. On the other hand, the statement that my ex-wife (i.e. a woman) is pregnant is a posteriori because I cannot confirm or deny this from logic alone.

    Bullock, A., and Trombley, S., eds. 2000. The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. 3rd ed. London: Harper Collins.

    Bunnin, N., and Yu, J., eds. 2009. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Grant, Barbara. 1997. Disciplining students: the construction of student subjectivities. British Journal of Sociology of Education 18(1): 101-114.