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Books

Debating the A Priori by Paul Boghossian & Timothy Williamson

Teresa Britton debates with debates about reasoning.

There was a time when the a priori – it means knowledge that’s gained independent of experience of the world – was simpler. The metaphysics was lofty and so, following in kind, was the epistemology, that is, the theory of knowledge. For instance, Plato claimed that all things in our everyday world are imperfect copies of objects in the Realm of the Forms. This abstract perfect world could only be known by a kind of sacred epistemic ‘staring into the sun’, particularly when considering the Form of ‘the Good’. Here the a priori method of pure reasoning was the holy light of the intellect.

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