What Anti-Individualists Cannot Know A Priori :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

What Anti-Individualists Cannot Know A PrioriABSTRACT The attempt to hold both anti-individualism and privileged self- association may have the absurd consequence that someone could know a priori propositions that are knowable only empiricly. This would be so if such an attempt entailed that one could know a priori both the contents of ones profess thoughts and the anti-individualistic entailments from those thought-contents to the world. For then one could also come to know a priori (by simple deduction) the empirical conditions entailed by ones thoughts. But I argue that at that place is no construal of a priori knowledge that could be used to raise an incompatibility problem of this sort. First, I suggest that the incompatibilist a priori must be a stipulative one, since in none of the main philosophical traditions does knowledge of the contents of ones thoughts count as a priori. Then, I show that under various mathematical construals of a priori, the incompatibilist argument would be invalid either a fallacy of equivocation or an argument without a plausible closure principle guaranteeing transmitting of epistemic status from expound to conclusion. Finally, I maintain that the only possible construal of the property of being knowable a priori that avoids invalidity is one that fails to generate the intend reductio.ICompatibilism, or the attempt to hold both Burgean anti-individualism and common intuitions about privileged self-knowledge, appears to entail that a person (say, Oscar) could come to know a priori the come befores of arguments of this sortB 1. If I am now thinking that water is wet, then water exists.2. I am now thinking that water is wet.Therefore, 3. urine exists.Naturally, from such premises Oscar could come to know a priori that water exists (i.e., by simple deduction) yet nobody can know that a priori Some shit this to be a reductio of compatibilism (call them incompatibilists). But I shall suggest how anti-individualists could r etain common intuitions about self-knowledge, without fearing that their views would entail unacceptable claims about the epistemic status of empirical propositions. First I shall ask why incompatibilists hold that, given both anti-individualism and privileged self-knowledge, each premise of inferences such as (B) are knowable a priori. I shall then argue that there is no plausible construal of a priori that could be used to generate the alleged reductio.IIFirst, consider (B)s second premise could Oscar come to know a priori the proposition that he is thinking that water is wet, according to the criteria for a priori knowledge in the main philosophical traditions that invoke knowledge of this sort?