Apriori knowledge is a topic in these religious forums but I thought it was worth stating our positions on the case of apriori knowledge - if anyone believes the following to be incorrect could you state why - Also if you dont know what it means to say that something can be known "a priori" - then it might be worth checking out at least an independent account of it. I cut and pasted this from an earlier post I made in another thread because I want to discuss apriori knowledge So how do you know triangles exist? they are defined before the fact (a priori) as being "any closed 3 sided object" amongst other definitions, so - you need not see a triangle to know what a triangle is. when you see a 3 sided object - you can say "hey a triangle", because we agreed that a triangle is any closed three sided object. So I reasoned out - this three sided object is a triangle because its a three sided object you can see the logic of it here x is y if x and y = z x= an object or shape y= triangularity z= 3 sidedness "this shape" (x) is "a triangle" (y) if x and y are "3 sided" (z) the opposite is: if x not = z and y = z then x not = y, x is not a triangle. So to test if we have a triangle all you do is say (if x=z and y=z then x=y) so what is a priori knowledge. You can see how you would know what a triangle is, before actually seeing one in the "real" world, because you already can define x in terms of x's attributes - you will know what you are looking at when you see it. Reason alone will tell you what it is since you have already established that any object with the attribute of a 3 sided closed object is a triangle - that is a sufficient condition. You cannot prove apriori that god exists though, because for something to be known apriori is for it to be known independent of experience.
yes; 'by deffinician', stands on its own. so you can give a name and discription, just make up both, and they could turn out to describe something that exists, or not, as the case may be, and untill someone came accross it, no one would really know whether it did or not. but some people might get all exited about it and insist that it has to and even decide to not like and claim there was something wrong with anyone who didn't want to 'believe in' it. well i don't claim to know what, if anything, HAS to exist. nor what, if anything, has to NOT exist. what i do know, is that nothing that does exist, has to resemble what anyone thinks they know about it. if you define something, that deffinician and your word for it go togather. whether or not they go with something that resembles that thing that might happen to acutaly exist, is another matter entirely. and that of course, is precisely where the problem comes in with organized beliefs. so they end up limiting what people can conceive of as being possible to exist when in reality they have no such factual knowledge of any such limitations upon what they don't objectively know. =^^= .../\...
True.according to human geometry. true again As a gedankenexperiment. Would say humanity of 10,000bc would call us gods if we put on a show. Occam suggests. Yes they would. Would we call humanity of 50,000ad gods if they put on a show. Occam suggests. yes. posteriory, based on experience, of human techological advancement. What form such a 'show of human technology' would take in 52006ad. Is anyones guess. Religion has no part in this.. They base creationism and the 'powers of a god' on ignorance. What they call miracle.. occam calls inevitable result of scientific method. [Dont ask a catholic monk of 1350ad to write speculative fiction.It will be about saints rising to heaven on pillars of flame..'Niel Armstrong'] Occam
mine from earlier wikipedia on apriori knowledge All I am saying is that it is best if people understood this term before replying to threads where it is used - Also the original post is just asking for clarification of whether people can live with my definition of "a priori knowledge" as thats what I understand but I'm open to suggestions or possible education on the matter FYI - "a priori" means something like "beforehand" - it is used in cases where reason alone informs you - you have no need to resort to sensory experience to KNOW something is true
Shit.. Wrote quite an elegant piece on apriori/posteriori understanding. A long one And accidentally deleted it. Occam gives up.[bit of a funk] Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Occam
Occam regarding your call to say that we would call people 50,000 years hence, gods - If you are saying that you could know they were gods independent of experience - you are just wrong - otherwise they wouldnt have to put on a show Its not like knowing that we will call anything in the wavelength of 1.0 - 699 Metres - shortwave - you wouldnt have to know what a wavelength was if it was merely an atribute of shortwave or whatever WL it is. To know god would not be to reason god but 2 experience it - we just cant define god without seeing it
Col Definition "A proposition is knowable a posteriori if it is knowable on the basis of experience." That experience being the precedent giving the status of gods to man of 2000ad by those of 10,000bc. This could happen right now. Imagine a man with a 500KT nuke buried between his legs under a dirt floored hut. He says to local primative tribes in the deep amazon area that if they let other 'white men come near him'.. he will bring the wrath of god to earth. That they must fight to preserve the true ways of the the god/gods of their tribe/jungle...And they fail And so it happens...And after.. all those outside 20 km blast zone say. the wrath of god was brought to earth. Thus , god/s exists. As a product of technology. At least for a certain number of people. But as there are 4800 religions on earth.. the numbers mean nothing. Especialliy if thay have a 500 meter diameter hole made of glass to call "gods footprint" And not so long later 'really strange stuff starts to happen' Children with no eyes. Animals with 2 heads. Occam
analytic logic even not everything can be known apriori just knowledge that depends upon a set of premises independent of experience. Its the basis of maths and scientific classification - etc where you know an object by its properties so if the properties are indisputably defined you will know the object - hence we cannot know god apriori - as not everyone can agree on the defining properties of god yeah youre right to say we could know aposteriori if they were gods - but could we know in the sense that its 100% beyond doubt the status is that apriori knowledge puts things beyond doubt not everything can be known apriori aposteriori knowledge relies on empirical data - therefore not everything is known 100% beyond doubt just because the sun has risen a trillion times we cannot reason that tomorrow will be the same
Sorry.. went all flippant for a bit there. Could have blamed Jimmy Beam but he didnt force me to guzzle his sour mash. Occam
It just seems to me that knowing something a prior, here, is synonomous with knowing an analytic proposition. I would agree that an analytic proposition is far removed from empirical obervation, since it is more or less a linguistic game. And I think I know where you may be going with this, that defining God a prior is not the samething as saying that God exist, especially if all that one can know about God a prior is that "God is God" which is trivial. But it appears to me that there are propostions which are a prior not merely by virtue of linguistic analysis. I'll try and explain this better when I have a little more time. I'll just say this for now: "knowing God" a prior in the biblical sense (of course not implying that "a prior" is used in the Bible ) is not adequately epressed with the proposition "God exist." You (and Hume) are absolutely correct, I believe, which is why arguments like the "teleological" argument ultimately fail as "proof" imo (at least given how they are typically poorly fomulated.)
yeah - more-or-less thats it - since no-one seems to agree on the extent of gods power - or even if god exists - then whatever you say apriori will necessarily be trivial that will be interesting to see where you take us ! I look forward to it ! Of course there could be apriori knowledge that rests on the case of an existential quantifier IF x exists (then for all x = y) x =z but then again .... hmm just thinkin out loud - take us where you will ! no - hume is correct - (assuming you refer to the sun rising example )I just read his book and coincidentally agreed with him - thought it was a good example and easy 4 people to understand
Ah, I understand. That's a bit different than what I intially thought. Hm. So perhaps something like ($x) (Yx <-> Zx) which would commits us to the existence of something. And if known a prior would commit us to the existence of something a prior? Sure thing! I'll be away for the next couple of days, but I should have some time once I get back. Yeah it was a good analogy.
How do you know, a priori, independent of experience, that any sentient being other than yourself exists? You can only 'know' that sentient beings exist a priori, and you can never prove that any of them exist. Does that mean they don't exist and that you shouldn't believe in them? I hope not. As for triangles..."any three sided object"? That begs the question "What is a side?" Maybe you can see from there how things get complicated, and that one is not required to possess a priori knowledge of the existence of a triangle?
Lil unicornbutt Well you exist apriori You reason therefore u exist. Personal experience in itself validates the statement. Unless u are a solopsist. Then there is an extremely high probability that others exist to reason as well. There is a line we can all cross in logic Into the absurd. And thus descates is always debated Due to the tunneling of data from exterior input to electrochemical impulse to processing/understanding. The transition from senses to processing means all is second hand. True [thus the 'matrix'] As for triangles. Would a baby placed in a sensory deprivation tank ever experience a triangle. Who can say Occam
