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Single Idea 3696

[filed under theme 13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / d. Rational foundations ]

Full Idea

A proposition will count as being justified a priori as long as no appeal to experience is needed for the proposition to be justified - once it is understood.

Gist of Idea

A priori justification requires understanding but no experience

Source

Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.2)

Book Ref

Bonjour,Laurence: 'In Defense of Pure Reason' [CUP 1998], p.10

A Reaction

Could you 'understand' that a square cannot be circular without appeal to experience? I'm losing faith in the pure a priori.

The 41 ideas from Laurence Bonjour

3695 Philosophy is a priori if it is anything [Bonjour]
3696 A priori justification requires understanding but no experience [Bonjour]
3697 The concept of possibility is prior to that of necessity [Bonjour]
3698 Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief [Bonjour]
3699 The induction problem blocks any attempted proof of physical statements [Bonjour]
3701 Externalist theories of justification don't require believers to have reasons for their beliefs [Bonjour]
3702 Externalism means we have no reason to believe, which is strong scepticism [Bonjour]
3700 Coherence can't be validated by appeal to coherence [Bonjour]
3703 You can't explain away a priori justification as analyticity, and you can't totally give it up [Bonjour]
3704 Moderate rationalists believe in fallible a priori justification [Bonjour]
3651 Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning [Bonjour]
3706 A priori justification can vary in degree [Bonjour]
3707 Our rules of thought can only be judged by pure rational insight [Bonjour]
3708 All thought represents either properties or indexicals [Bonjour]
3709 Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred [Bonjour]
4255 Externalist theories of knowledge are one species of foundationalism [Bonjour]
4261 The Lottery Paradox says each ticket is likely to lose, so there probably won't be a winner [Bonjour, by PG]
4257 The big problem for foundationalism is to explain how basic beliefs are possible [Bonjour]
4256 The main argument for foundationalism is that all other theories involve a regress leading to scepticism [Bonjour]
4258 Extreme externalism says no more justification is required than the truth of the belief [Bonjour]
4259 External reliability is not enough, if the internal state of the believer is known to be irrational [Bonjour]
4260 Even if there is no obvious irrationality, it may be irrational to base knowledge entirely on external criteria [Bonjour]
21506 A coherence theory of justification can combine with a correspondence theory of truth [Bonjour]
21508 Anomalies challenge the claim that the basic explanations are actually basic [Bonjour]
21509 There will always be a vast number of equally coherent but rival systems [Bonjour]
21510 The objection that a negated system is equally coherent assume that coherence is consistency [Bonjour]
21511 A well written novel cannot possibly match a real belief system for coherence [Bonjour]
21503 Empirical coherence must attribute reliability to spontaneous experience [Bonjour]
21505 A coherent system can be justified with initial beliefs lacking all credibility [Bonjour]
21504 The best explanation of coherent observations is they are caused by and correspond to reality [Bonjour]
8887 It is hard to give the concept of 'self-evident' a clear and defensible characterization [Bonjour]
8888 The concept of knowledge is so confused that it is best avoided [Bonjour]
8889 Reliabilists disagree over whether some further requirement is needed to produce knowledge [Bonjour]
8890 If the reliable facts producing a belief are unknown to me, my belief is not rational or responsible [Bonjour]
8891 My incoherent beliefs about art should not undermine my very coherent beliefs about physics [Bonjour]
8892 Coherence seems to justify empirical beliefs about externals when there is no external input [Bonjour]
8894 Coherentists must give a reason why coherent justification is likely to lead to the truth [Bonjour]
8893 For any given area, there seem to be a huge number of possible coherent systems of beliefs [Bonjour]
8895 If neither the first-level nor the second-level is itself conscious, there seems to be no consciousness present [Bonjour]
8896 Conscious states have built-in awareness of content, so we know if a conceptual description of it is correct [Bonjour]
8897 The adverbial account will still be needed when a mind apprehends its sense-data [Bonjour]