APRIORI KNOWLEDGE by Tintu Gopurathingal, ( 9009)

APRIORI KNOWLEDGE

Immanuel Kant put forward the two different kinds of knowledge a priori and a posteriori in his book "The Critique of Pure Reason." The Latin phrases a priori ("from what is before") and a posteriori ("from what is after") were used in philosophy originally to distinguish between arguments from causes and arguments from effects. Apriori is said to be "from causes to the effect" and an argument a posteriori to be "from effects to causes." the use of a priori to distinguish knowledge such as that which we have in mathematics is comparatively recent, the interest of philosophers in that kind of knowledge is almost as old as philosophy itself. Philosophers who have taken seriously the possibility of learning by mere thinking have often considered that this requires some special explanation. So the called this kind of knowledge as the a priori knowledge. This is introduced by Kant but the other philosophers also made their comment on the same concept. For René Descartes, going further in the same direction held that all the ideas required for a priori knowledge were innate in each human mind.

The term a priori is a scholastic term that has the origin in certain ideas of Aristotle; but their use has been considerably extended in the course of history, and their present use stems from the meaning given to them by Immanuel Kant. The term literally mean "from what prior." A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience. A Priori is a philosophical term that is used in several different ways. The term is supposed to mean knowledge that is gained through deduction, and not through empirical evidence. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1781) advocated a blend of rationalist and empiricist theories. Kant states, "Although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience only." So the apriori knowledge is the knowledge that is independent of all particular experiences. A priori knowledge is knowledge that rests on a priori justification. A priori justification is a type of epistemic justification that is, in some sense, independent of experience. There are a variety of views about whether a priori justification can be defeated by other evidence, especially by empirical evidence, and a variety of views about whether a priori justification, or knowledge, must be only of necessary, or analytic, propositions, or at least of ones believed to be necessary or analytic. It is used to describe knowledge that exists without reference to reality. For example a bachelor is an unmarried male, inborn knowledge, or 2 + 3 = 5 etc. a priori justification must rest on the justification that rational intuition, or insight, provides. In deductive arguments they provide the justification for the belief that the conclusion follows from the premises, and sometimes for the premises themselves. Kant thinks that a priori knowledge is independent of the content of experience; moreover, unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is knowledge limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience. So he put forward that we can attain knowledge without any physical experience that is the a priori knowledge.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Britannica and Wikipedia.