A priori and a posteriori

This could be seen in the following: If you want to torture children, you should seek psychiatric help. You want to torture children. Therefore, you should seek psychiatric help. While this seems perfectly valid, suppose we replace the first premise with a hypothetical imperative: If you want to torture children, you should volunteer as a babysitter. You want to torture children. Therefore, you should volunteer as a babysitter. Thus, when we affirm the first premise as a hypothetical imperative,…

John Locke states that we can acquire knowledge via sense perceptions even though this kind of knowledge is not like that of demonstration. He argues this through the use of his readings and his quotations. They accurately represent what he thinks and how he goes about experimenting this idea. John Locke explains his ideas into three different subheadings that come together to prove his point. His first point is that when we are born, we are born with a blank slate of mind. His second point is…

David Hume was one of the most influential philosophers of his time and continues to be mentioned and studies to this day. Almost equally as impressive was the response that philosopher Immanuel Kant had to his Inquiry of Human Understanding. Kant attempted to respond to Hume’s ideas and in this essay, I will identify the Hume’s beliefs behind the concepts such as cause, and effect and I will later defend Kant’s response to Hume. He raises points that leave his reader with a deeper understanding…

Locke defines the human brain as being a “blank slate”, which presents the a posteriori concept of knowledge coming after birth, and not before this event. More so, the human mind is fallible and not “perfect” as Descartes implies with the pre-existence of God’s omnipotence. Empirically, the study of the human memory defines the underlying…

This essay will analyze the similarities and differences of an ancient greek philosopher, Plato and the modern influence of Immanuel Kant. Plato’s writings are actually Socrates thoughts, Socrates was the main philosopher behind Plato’s philosophies. The philosophies were structured around, thinking your own mind/obtaining knowledge, living the good life, and the immortal soul. Kant’s philosophies can be looked at as branches from Plato’s knowledge and thought because of the gap in their…

distinction between an a priori argument for the existence of God and an a posteriori argument for the existence of God and identify which type of argument the Ontological Argument is and which type of argument the Cosmological Argument is. • A Posterior Argument: Relies substantively on empirical promises, sensory experience, and observations. o The cosmological argument is an a posterior argument • A Priori Argument: Doesn’t rely substantively on empirical promises. An a priori argument is…

With that in mind, Descartes begins to sketch arguments that call all his a priori knowledge into doubt. The first of those, is an argument regarding God. Descartes writes how it is firmly rooted in his mind that there is an omnipotent God, who created him, and the whole world. He follows that by adding, however, that there is no way for him to know if God did in fact create the earth, the sky, and the the things he sees, but is merely deceiving Descartes into believing they exist. Furthermore,…

the only one who is capable of fully articulating a priori concepts of reasoning. In order to fully understand the concept of reason, a person must be completely motivated by reasons, which allow them to shape, modify or validate their personal beliefs. The first‐person concept allows a person to identify their rational behaviours and attitudes as his or her personal beliefs. The general idea of self-knowledge is that there is an immediate a priori warrant, versus the knowledge of other’s…

While it has transcendental ideality in the sense that it is not a property belonging to external objects in themselves, instead existing as an a priori intuition within us, space continues to have empirical reality in that it applies to all the appearances we have of external objects. (A28/B44). Kant ultimately holds that space is not intuited as existing in anything itself, as a form which we impose…

The ontological argument is different than the cosmological or teleological arguments as it relies on A Priori knowledge rather than A Posteriori. A Priori knowledge is knowledge that you can know prior to any experience; it is known through reason alone. This essay will explore how reliable the ontological argument is. The ontological argument is an argument for the existence of god by St Anselm (1033-1109). Anselm defined god as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” His argument…