explain in layman's terms...?

[ljusastjarnan]

On the risk of sounding stupid and incurring the contempt of you all, I'd like to ask a rookie's question about the distinction between a-priori and posteriori - namely, what is it? And does have anything to do with the varying levels simulacra, the signifier/signified - both concepts of which I only have rudimentary knowledge of

Comments

[foolsguinea]

a priori - from logical postulates
a posteriori - empirical, from experience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori

[ljusastjarnan]

thank.

[zentiger]

Well, my contempt-ray is in the shop, so I guess I'll have to say something useful.

The a priori is that realm of knowledge which can be obtained without making any specific observation. The a posteriori is everything else.

Kant's great insight was to decouple the a priori from the "analytic" and the a posteriori from the "synthetic" truths, though this didn't really reach fruition until Kripke, who did it wrong. (But now my prejudices are showing.)

Honestly, felephant is better-suited to explain what's going on in Art-World than am I.

For Kant, Henry Allison or Huaping Lu-Adler are basically the authorities to which I turn; if you don't have institutional access, let me know and I'll see what they'll let me send you.

[ljusastjarnan]

Thanks, it came to me after reading the explanation a few times. /dunce

But what's the difference between an analytic a-priori, and synthetic a-priori truths, when they both seem to describe truths that that are known "by virtue of their meaning"?

and I'll check them out, thanks. I've got access to jstor and the usual, if I don't find anything, that'll be very useful.

[zentiger]

Well, the classic example is from the first Critique: analytic a priori truths are things that are true in virtue of the meanings of the parts of the utterance, like "Hesperus is Hesperus". Not very interesting, for the most part. Kant's example of a synthetic a priori truth is "7+5=12"; the idea of twelve is nowhere in the left-hand side of that equation, but you still don't need to make any particular observation to figure it out.

Structuralists about mathematics think Kant was wrong here, for what it's worth; there, I'd start with Shapiro, though I don't off the top of my head remember a good paper. If you're interested, let me know and I'll poke through the syllabus I used last time I taught phil math.

[ljusastjarnan]

So synthetic a-priori truths require another jump in logic whereas analytic a-priori truths still remain true just by it's definition? This distinction seems a bit arbitrary, but what do I know.

I would be, but I don't have the time to chew through very long dissertations on the topic - I'll definitely dig around though. Phil maths sounds really cool. I'd be quite interested in studying philosophy on a college level, if there wasn't a lack of apparent future prospects.