Apriorism

[sjw]

If you try to talk to (say) a fervently religious person, they will often resort to "I just know" about a laundry list of things. Is not every kind of apriorist just a more intellectual form of this person who indulges their "I just know" whims? ("I just know" translates to "I just want it to be so, I know I can't explain why, and I refuse to consider revising my view".)

The natural trend for a fundamentally dishonest but intelligent person is going to be to try to fake honesty. One way to fake it here is to convert the laundry list into a set of more abstract rationalizations, a set of "I just know because I know" statements such as Categorical Imperatives. Isn't all apriorism of any flavor just some person's attempt to push the dishonesty to the next higher level, just like a religionist explains where the Universe came from with God, but then refuses to bother trying to explain where God came from?

To my mind, apriorism of all kinds is a view that throws its hands in the air when failing to explain something, and then makes up a pseudo-intellectual rationalization for the failure.

Shayne

[sjw]

Side note: I would argue that Ayn Rand's theory of perception is its own brand of apriorism.

Shayne

[Selene]

Side note: I would argue that Ayn Rand's theory of perception is its own brand of apriorism.

Shayne

Ayn Rand and Empiricism

Rand stated in 1960 that philosophers could be divided into two camps, rationalists and empiricists. Empiricists “claimed that man obtained his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts. . . . " [FNI, p. 30.] Leonard Peikoff put it in somewhat more balanced form in his article “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” - empiricists minimize the role of reason in the acquisition of knowledge, while rationalists minimize the role of experience. On the other hand, because Rand rejected

a priori

justification and asserted that all knowledge must be based on experience, it seems fair to say that Rand fits more comfortably in the empiricist tradition. Critics of Objectivism have generally understood Rand’s epistemology as a version of empiricism. However, Tibor Machan argues that Rand’s view of axioms places her outside the empiricist camp. “Existence, identity, and consciousness are simply not on the same level of abstraction as this-here patch of red or this-here tomato. [Machan,

Ayn Rand

, p. 37.]

In rejecting

a priori

knowledge, Rand maintained consistently that the principles of logic must be discovered. As Peikoff put it: “Man is born

tabula

rasa

; all his knowledge is based on and derived from the evidence of his senses. . . . Man needs to discover a method to guide this process, if it is to yield to conclusions which correspond to the facts of reality . . . .” [

ITO

, p. 112.]

The obvious question is: How can a blank slate “discover” a method for thinking? The ability to discover a method presupposes the existence of basic structures of thought, such as the ability to observe contradictions, make generalizations and the like.

[1]

It isn’t clear that Rand provides a direct answer, but perhaps we can get some insight into this from Rand’s discussion of logic and grammar.

Our own Neil Parille's article here was posted on ROR

[sjw]

The problem for the apriorist is exemplified by David Hume:

"I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardonable arrogance who concludes, because an argument has escaped his own investigation, that therefore it does not really exist."--David Hume

The apriorist makes the claim that his apriorist propositions are the end of the philosophical road, and that there is no point in proceeding further, on the mere grounds that he has not been able to proceed further.

Shayne

[peterdjones]

Are Rand's axioms apriori?

[PJ Moriarty]

Are Rand's axioms apriori?

If we're to go with the colloquial definitions of a priori (knowledge preceding experience) and a posteriori (Knowledge as the result of experience) then Rand's axioms are certainly in the latter category. Axiomatic concepts are a special breed, however. One knows any single one of the axioms by experience of anything. To my knowledge, this is not true of any other concepts.

Rand's axioms are also not available to the pre-conceptual consciousness, whereas many apriorists would say even infants have knowledge of some proposition, such as Peano's second axiom of natural numbers. (Just pulling some intuitive idea from the ether there). Rand's axioms must be learned, but are implicit in any experience we have.

[BaalChatzaf]

Are Rand's axioms apriori?

If we're to go with the colloquial definitions of a priori (knowledge preceding experience) and a posteriori (Knowledge as the result of experience) then Rand's axioms are certainly in the latter category. Axiomatic concepts are a special breed, however. One knows any single one of the axioms by experience of anything. To my knowledge, this is not true of any other concepts.

Rand's axioms are also not available to the pre-conceptual consciousness, whereas many apriorists would say even infants have knowledge of some proposition, such as Peano's second axiom of natural numbers. (Just pulling some intuitive idea from the ether there). Rand's axioms must be learned, but are implicit in any experience we have.

Is this similar to the Kantian synthetic a priori?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited July 31, 2011 by BaalChatzaf

[PJ Moriarty]

Well, synthetic truths are just truths that are not true in virtue of the terms involved in some proposition, it has nothing to do necessarily with experience perse, though many do connect the two.

Kant's synthetic a priori truths do not require experience, far as I know. I've never read Kant directly on this, but it's my understanding (SAP) truths are propositions about the external world which are not known via meaning of the terms, but known before experience. This he connects with many of our notions of causal rules, like every event must have a cause.

I think Objectivism's axioms stand opposed to this. As I said before, the axioms are truths brought by experience and without experience, we do not know of them. (or anything, really)

You could say it is similar to the (SAP) truths in that they both are validated by every experience of the world that we have. Rand (and Peikoff more explicitly and at length) say that the law of causality is a corollary of the axiom of identity and so is reified in any contact we have with the world. In that way, Kant has something in common with Objectivism, but I wouldn't say the axioms and (SAP) truths are any more similar than that.

Now analytic a posteriori, mmm I like me some of those!

Edited July 31, 2011 by PJ Moriarty

[peterdjones]

If we're to go with the colloquial definitions of a priori (knowledge preceding experience) and a posteriori (Knowledge as the result of experience) then Rand's axioms are certainly in the latter category. Axiomatic concepts are a special breed, however. One knows any single one of the axioms by experience of anything.

Should that be taken to mean "I have always known all the axioms by every experience I have had to date" or "I know that

any experience I could have, and any experience I will have, will confirm the axioms".

If the former, there could be a possible experience that would not confirm the axioms. What would that look like?

If the latter, that is apriori knowledge itself.

.

Edited August 7, 2011 by peterdjones