A prioriism states that knowledge presents a priori elements, inherent to consciousness or forms of intuition. It is an epistemological current that seeks to reconcile rationalism and empiricism, since it considers that both experience and thought are sources of knowledge.
That is why apriorism considers that all knowledge comes from experience but is not exhausted in it, since it is thought that gives it its universal and necessary character by organizing it in a specific way.
Kant main thinker of apriorism. Source: nach Veit Hans Schnorr
The apriorism would have a similarity with the rationalism, but the difference lies in how these factors are a priori. In the case of rationalism they are perfect contents or concepts, while in apriorism they are forms of knowledge, which receive their content from experience.
For apriorism, a priori elements would be like empty containers, typical of reason, of thought, which are filled with concrete content through experience. But unlike intellectualism, this epistemological current considers that thought does not adopt a passive and receptive position, but rather conducts itself spontaneously and actively in the face of experience.
Its fundamental principle is that “concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind ”.
Sensitivity and understanding
The apriorism proposed by Kant, its main representative, proposes sensitivity and understanding as aspects that make experience possible. Sensitivity is understood as the possibility of intuiting objects or apprehending them and determining how they affect us through representations. The ability to think about objects or their representations and relate them is what refers to understanding.
Our sensitivity has molds to which things are adapted to be represented, these being the forms defined by Kant. Objects are represented as extensive or successive, depending on whether they are apprehended in the form of space or in the form of time, respectively. These a priori forms are the foundation of intuitions.
Additionally, the representations of objects must adapt to new molds in order to be thought, is what Kant calls the categories of understanding. These categories or pure concepts correspond to different kinds of judgments.
The categories would be 1) Unity, 2) Plurality, 3) Totality, 4) Reality, 5) Denial, 6) Limitation, 7) Possibility and Impossibility, 8) Existence and Nonexistence, 9) Necessity and Contingency, 10) Substance and Accident, 11) Cause and Effect, 12) Reciprocal Action.
While the trials to which each one corresponds would be: 1) Singular, 2) Particular, 3) Universal, 4) Affirmative, 5) Negative, 6) undefined, 7) Problematic, 8) Assertorical, 9) Apodictic, 10) Categorical, 11) Hypothetical and 12) Disjunctive.
Origin
The Latin phrase a priori, as well as a posteriori, appear in the time of Euclid, approximately 300 BC. C. An early use in the philosophical field is also detected in Plato, when he raises his Theory of Ideas, differentiating the sensible world (of appearances) from the Intelligible (where the truth resides). In the latter are the universal, eternal and immutable things, which can only be accessed through reason.
Then, from the fourteenth century on, both forms of knowledge are referred to in the writings of Albert of Saxony, Gottfried Leibniz and George Berkeley.
However, the origin of apriorism in its maximum essence dates back to the approaches of Kant, whose philosophy tried to mediate between the rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff and the empiricism of Locke and Hume.
Kant considered that the matter of knowledge comes from experience, which would be the sensations, but these, lacking rules and order, appear in a chaotic way. It is when the thought comes to give it shape and order, connecting the contents of the sensations.
Kant argued that the order was given by juxtaposition or succession and having space and time as parameters. Then, it comes up with up to 12 categories or ways of thinking.
characteristics
A priorism is an epistemological current that seeks to reconcile rationalism and empiricism. Source: Pixabay
The notion of a priori is necessarily linked to that of a posteriori, indicating respectively that a certain something is 'prior to' or is 'after'.
In the philosophical sense, it assumes that this type of knowledge is independent of experience. For this reason it is usually associated with universal, timeless or eternal, reliable and necessary knowledge. In contrast to a posteriori knowledge that is usually based on experience and therefore is linked to the particular, temporary and contingent.
For apriorism, knowledge is a fact, but it is necessary to determine how that fact is possible. That is, not to accept it dogmatically, but to investigate it, determine what it consists of and what its scope is.
Although apriorism seems to have great similarity to intellectualism because it tries to consider that knowledge is formed jointly from experience and thought, it is important to contrast them.
In the first, the approach to knowledge is active, that is, you have an experience and it is shaped through thought. In the second case, it is a passive approach, since the concepts depend on and come from experience, so they are only received.
Representatives
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher who argued that all knowledge begins with experience, but denies that it derives entirely from it, thus trying to resolve politics between nativists and empiricists.
He considers that there are no innate knowledge, however, for there to be knowledge, it is necessary for man, with his capacity, to intervene in experience, apprehend things and then operate with them, either by decomposing or associating them.
The German philosopher divides the a priori forms of intelligence between three levels that would be perception, understanding and reason, as well as includes two notions that are not extracted from experience but that condition its possibility, which are space and time.
Another philosopher who is considered to have been greatly influenced by Kant's apriorism was the German Johann Fichte (1762-1814). Creator of the dialectical triad in his terminology thesis - antithesis - synthesis, he was a thinker who continued the critical philosophy of Kant. It is considered a link between apriorism, for generating a turn towards the thinking subject that gives meaning to cognitive thinking and that characterizes all German idealism.
Other thinkers who can be identified with apriorism are those belonging to the so-called neo-Kantianism, among which Herman Cohen, Ernst Cassirer, Wilhelm Windelband, Aloys Riehl, Hermann Lotze, Nicolai Harmann, Wilhelm Dilthey, Hermann von Helmholtz, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Friedrich Albert Lange stand out., Otto Liebmann and Heinrich Rickert, among others.
References
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- Hessen, J. (1979). Theory of knowledge. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe SA
- Moya, E. (2004). Apriorism and evolution (Kant and Popper's emergent naturalism). Philosophy Magazine, n ° 33, pp 25-47
- Wikipedia contributors. (2019, October 27). A priori and a posteriori. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Recovered from wikipedia.org
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- Great Rialp Encyclopedia, Volume II, pages 535 to 537. Editorial Rialp, SA, Madrid.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2017, June 23). A priori knowledge. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Recovered from britannica.com
- Moreno Villa, M. (2003) Philosophy. Vol. I: Philosophy of Language, Logic, Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics. Spain: Editorial MAD
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