forum for week of Nov 7: kinds of apriori beliefs

There are two obvious sources of apriori beliefs: mathematics and the meaning of words." 2+3=5" and "cats are animals".  
Can you think of any examples that don't  fit into either category?  If not, can you suggest a reason why there are not any?
(You don't have to commit yourself to thinking that there are apriori beliefs, but just that there are beliefs someone might plausibly take to be apriori.

Kant posited that there are additional apriori beliefs, called synthetic apriori beliefs (such as the belief that effects have causes) that are necessary in advance of any evidence, in order to collect and make sense of evidence. Kant’s explanation for the truth of these beliefs is somewhat related to idealism in that these beliefs are necessarily true because we make them so, due to the structure of our mental processes. Although, as Quine argues, perhaps even these beliefs may change, we must nevertheless, maintain some central apriori beliefs in order to live and form any aposteriori beliefs.

To add to Kant’s list of apriori beliefs, I wonder whether our basic biological instincts, such as the sensation of needing to eat or sleep, would also satisfy Kant’s criteria for synthetic apriori beliefs, since we seem to be aware of our need to do these things in advance of our collecting evidence to verify this (though the evidence does follow shortly after fulfilling these needs by the sensations of fullness or reinvigoration). Additionally, such instinctual reactions are necessary in order for us to be able to collect evidence to form further beliefs since we would not be able to live without fulfilling these needs. Should instincts be classified as apriori beliefs, however, they would likely be, like Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”, considered as apriori but not necessary since animals’ instincts to eat could have been false . Of course, in that case, we wouldn’t have evolved in the way we have and thus wouldn’t be here to speculate on this matter.

Apriori beliefs seem to be extremely limited in number and this may be due to a false distinction between beliefs that can be obtained in the absence of evidence since even apriori beliefs involve the presence of a world. There is, therefore, a limit to the beliefs we can reasonably say could be apriori, though I am unconvinced that even these beliefs are entirely so, instead i would call them "as apriori as possible". If all that existed was a floating brain, would it really be able to form beliefs about mathematics or cause and effect without any evidence of the existence of objects? I would be inclined to say no: evidence requires apriori beliefs and apriori beliefs require evidence. Which came first would seem to be something of a “chicken or egg” question.

I wouldn't say biological instincts are apriori belief. I think that society learned from evidencial experience how to satisfy their needs for hunger and thirst (what types of food to eat, e.g how to avoiding eating poisonous berries etc.). This notion can also be uptaken by sleep itself (through evidential experience one learns that 8 hours of sleep is the "optimal amount"-not a pregiven Getting back to the question at hand, I would argue that there is only in fact one source of aprori knowledge, and that is from the meaning of words itself. Mathematics, to an extent is reliant upon a specific language to which all must agree upon, and the terminology and the way this specific diction interacts. Terms like "equals", "addition" "divisible" are are reliant upon the language one uses to describe them but I think those terms cannot be accepted as a given, rather must have been created by someone (whoever was creating language) to order to aid the process of comparison and causation of numbers. Now of course one could argue that math is universally agreed upon and cannot be fundamentally challenged, but that doesn't solve the fact that math is understood the way it has been through the way one understands meaning in the words used to describe what is at hand. To this I believe that no there are not any others apriori beliefs that stem other than interaction of words...? (Deductive reasoning, analytical beliefs all come from the way words and their meanings interact).

I had a long debate with a previous metaphysics prof about whether rules of games could be considered a priori knowledge, ie. that three strikes constitute an out in baseball. This really just comes down in the end to how wide the semantic content of the term "baseball" is. Does the term "baseball" necessarily denote "the game in which three strikes constitutes an out", or is that instead non-essential data to the concept of baseball that must be obtained via experience.

I would suggest that logic, or more specifically the deductively valid argument mentioned in the text, could be viewed as a combination of the two categories put forth in the question. Predicate logic, or word math as I think of it, would seem to be a manner of achieving apriori beliefs. Predicate logic is a language that can be learned, with rules for sentence structure and grammar, but which uses quantifiers, predicates, and variables in place of words. Once a person learns the language, it can be used to analyze propositions and arguments. An argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false at the same time. Once you understand that definition and the language of predicate logic, it becomes possible to reason and arrive at new true beliefs without having to acquire new evidence.

Now granted, this relies on an understanding of the logical language in advance. But that is no different than any other analytic belief which all require a grasp of language. Predicate logic is just one form of logical reasoning that can lead to apriori beliefs, but it's an interesting one as it seems to combine two separate sources into one.

I think that the previous poster hit on a very important point, regarding the placement of predicate logic within the framework of a priori beliefs. I would argue, however, that predicate logic is an example that falls under both categories of math and meanings (leaning perhaps more towards math, but that is a separate issue). I don't think that there are any a priori beliefs outside the realms of mathematics and definitions (which, incidentally, seem to overlap a lot), because anything we could justify independent of experience, or before evidence, would need to be thought of within a framework of logical rules, and as the previous poster has already posited, it seems as though predicate logic itself is a combination of mathematical rules and definitions. Even language, when really boiled down and stripped bare, seems to be a manifestation of some sort of syntactic structure or another, which really is no different from mathematics (for instance, consider the roles parsing trees play in both the study of language and mathematics). In short, it seems to me that a priori beliefs outside of mathematics and definitions are difficult (perhaps impossible) to really find because we are structured, in the absence of evidence, to think in terms of mathematics and definitions, and in combinations of the two, the primary combination being predicate logic.

I don't think there is such a thing as apriori knowledge because any sort of reasoning requires previous evidence. For example, we know 2+3 is 5 because we have learned about the mathematical foundations that are needed in order to solve the problem. On the other hand, even if we haven't solved 123456 + 12314142141412414 before personally or seen anyone else solve the problem, we get the answer by evidence that we have learned previously. Hence I believe no such thing as apriori knowledge can exist because even the tinest events in our lives require reasoning and evidence, even though the process may be so subtle that we don't realize it

If the offspring of two Asian parents has black hair it is apriori to believe that the parents will also be of asian ethnicity with black hair. In order to classify the individual features, we need to to assume for every asian-looking person at least one of their parent are of Asian ethnicity.

Mathematics in itself is a language, the only universal one to exist. The numbers have meanings, in whatever language they are translated to when we discuss them. I would say all our beliefs are based on the meaning we give to them, they are all relative to the way we perceive the world. But they are also all interlinked and they depend on other beliefs. Even mathematical beliefs like 2+2=4 is based on certain beliefs we have about what numbers mean and what "+" and "=" mean. Without having those beliefs, we cannot understand 2+2=4.

A Priori Belief Example:

4.3 Quantum Mechanics Other physical candidates for backward causation can be founded in the physics literature. Richard Feynman once came up with the idea that the electron could go backwards in time as a possible interpretation of the positron (Feynman, 1949). In fact he imagined the possibility that perhaps there were only one electron in the world zig-zaging back and forth in time. An electron moving backwards in time would carry negative energy whereas it would with respect to our ordinary time sense have positive charge and positive energy. But few consider this as a viable interpretation today (Earman, 1967, 1976).

More recently, the Bell type experiments have been interpreted by some as if quantum events could be connected in such a way that the past light cone might be accessible under non-local interaction; not only in the sense of action at a distance but as backward causation. One of the most enticing experiments of this kind is the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser designed by Yoon-Ho Kim et. al (2000). It is a rather complicated construction. It is set up to measure correlated pairs of photons, which are in an entangled state, so that one of the two photons is detected 8 nanoseconds before its partner. The results of the experiment are quite amazing. They seem to indicate that the behavior of the photons detected these 8 nanoseconds before their partners is determined by how the partners will be detected. Indeed it might be tempting to interpret these results as an example of the future causing the past. The result is, however, in accordance with the predictions of quantum mechanics.

Source: Stanford Encycopedia of Philosophy. Backward Causation.

I believe feeling threat could be one example of an a priori which is neither mathematics nor meaning of words. When impending danger is near, most people are able to detect it without any foreknowledge. For example, you may have heard of a person talking about how they knew "something was just wrong" or felt like "something bad was about to happen" after a tragedy or an unfortunate incident occurring. Sometimes people go out of their way to react to the feeling of threat although there may be no substantial evidence to prove that there are actually any threatening factors around them just to have the threat confirmed afterwards. However, I understand that there are exceptions to this, such as mere paranoia when everything may seem like a threat when it is not and having (bad) luck play a role in whether what they expected ends up happening afterall.

I believe that human emotion in general can be seen as an apriori belief. We are able to predict how our emotions would react to certain events. For example, we are able to predict that failing an exam would be followed by a negative emotion, and that acing an exam would result in a positive emotion.