Williamson on the Distinction between the A Priori and the A Posteriori Once Again1

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-174
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian ◽  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Epistemic Role ◽  
Problematic Claim ◽  
The Way

This essay responds to Williamson’s reformulated argument against the feasibility of a top-down characterization of the a priori–a posteriori distinction, arguing that Williamson fails to show that sense experience plays an irreducibly epistemic role in his new Mathematician example. Williamson’s example turns on the problematic claim that there is something intermediate between reading a proof lazily, deferring to the authority of its author, and reading it while checking its soundness for oneself. Furthermore, it is argued that Williamson’s defense of his Central argument is vitiated by a serious misreading of Boghossian’s initial criticism: that criticism was not meant to supply an alternative account of the way in which certain a priori propositions are known.

Do We Have Reason to Doubt the Importance of the Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge?

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian ◽  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Type Of Exercise

This essay defends the a priori–a posteriori distinction against two skeptical challenges posed by Williamson in Chapter 8. Against the argument that no top-down characterization of the distinction can line up with the intuitive paradigm examples, it contends that the argument’s reliance on the distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ experience renders it ineffective. An alternative way of running the argument is shown to lead to a different conclusion, one about the nature of justifiers. Against Williamson’s central argument, which presents a pair of cases designed to show that whatever distinction the paradigm examples mark it cannot be one of epistemological significance, the essay argues that Williamson fails to draw the correct conclusions from his cases, and in particular fails to show that the subject in either case can acquire justified belief via the type of exercise of the imagination that he describes.

From Parnassus to Bayreuth: Staging a Music which is Not One

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-221
Author(s):  
Sarah Hickmott
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Music And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

The final chapter brings together all three thinkers and demonstrates the way in which they all – albeit in different ways – inherit and deploy aspects of a Romantic and idealist conception of music. It considers their writings on Wagner in order to ascertain more clearly how their different positions play out over a shared question: to what extent is Wagner’s music fascist or anti-Semitic? Rather than seek to solve this problem, the chapter argues that their positions on this question relate to their a priori understanding of the relationship between music and philosophy, their broader political-philosophical commitments, and their characterization of what is ‘essentially’ musical. The chapter also draws on Irigaray’s work in order to show how both Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe reinstate a gendered foundationalism (specifically the musical maternal-feminine which logically and chronologically precedes the symbolic, language, and culture) that is so at odds with their broader projects; by contrast, though Badiou never identifies music ‘itself’ with the feminine, the way in which he constructs ‘truth’ nonetheless rehabilitates a certain feminine exceptionalism alongside a pervasive misogyny in his work. The concluding analytic argues for multiply intersecting planes of mediation and a non-reductive approach to both music and gender that refuses to attribute a single essence to either.

Style, Function, and Assemblage Variability: A Reply to Binford

1986 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 628-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Sackett
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real Argument ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

Binford's characterization of the isochrestic model of style seriously misrepresents it, particularly with regard to the assemblage variability problem. Here his criticisms are answered, the real argument of the model reviewed, and the reasons for his misrepresentation explored. It may be pertinent to the latter that the model has been presented in conjunction with a strong critique of his own work on style, which remains unanswered. Equally relevant, however, are the facts that its use calls for kinds of expertise Binford himself may not possess and that in any case his own theoretical preconceptions lead him to confound it with more traditional notions of style and consequently to dismiss it on a priori grounds. In fact, isochrestism may point the way toward a new means for addressing assemblage variability that frees style and function from much of the doctrinaire thinking that now encumbers them.

MOORE AND DESCARTES MEET IN A BAR

Think ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (31) ◽  
pp. 21-26
Author(s):  
Renée Smith
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Right

Philosophers typically distinguish between a priori and a posteriori beliefs, knowledge, justification, and propositions. A belief is a priori if it is derived from reason, and it is a posteriori if it is derived from sense experience. Similarly, we would say that we know a priori that ‘a closed, n-sided figure has n interior angles’ because our knowledge is derived from reason in that we understand the concept of a closed, n-sided figure and thus know the statement is true. On the other hand, we know a posteriori that ‘Americans drive on the right’ because in justifying this belief, we appeal to sense experience; perhaps we have seen for ourselves that Americans drive on the right or we've read about it in a book or seen it in a movie.

ŽITIJE I PODVIZI PRAVEDNOG JOVA U KONTEKSTU STAROZAVETNE „KNjIGE O JOVU“

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Emina Peric Komnenovic
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Way

The main goal of the research presented in the paper is the unveiling of the relations between forming the topic, characters and motives in the apocrypha Hagiography and Feats of Job the Righteous and in the book of the Old Testament The Book of Job; the particularities of those relations and their mutual impacts. In the paper, there is a successiveness between the hermeneutic-interpretative, deductive and comparative methods, where the comparative method is the cardinal one. Special attention is dedicated to the way in which the genre orientation affects the topic and motives, as well as the way in which the text of the apocrypha bases its legitimacy. The main conclusions are based on the difference in modelling of the commonplaces in writing, as well as the presence of the a priori characterization of characters in the text of the hagiography and the individualization of the characters in the biblical text

scholarly journals Inversion analysis of carbon monoxide emissions using data from the TES and MOPITT satellite instruments

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 17625-17662 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. B. A. Jones ◽  
K. W. Bowman ◽  
J. A. Logan ◽  
C. L. Heald ◽  
J. Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Inverse Modeling ◽  
Transport Model ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Systematic Errors ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Australian Region ◽  
Temporal Sampling ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
Satellite Instruments

Abstract. We conduct an inverse modeling analysis of measurements of atmospheric CO from the TES and MOPITT satellite instruments using the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model. This is the first quantitative analysis of the consistency of the information provided by these two instruments on surface emissions of CO in an inverse modeling context. We focus on observations of CO for November 2004, when the climatological emission inventory in the GEOS-Chem model significantly underestimated the atmospheric abundance of CO as observed by TES and MOPITT. We find that both datasets suggest significantly greater emissions of CO from sub-equatorial Africa and the Indonesian/Australian region. The a posteriori emissions from sub-equatorial Africa based on TES and MOPITT data were 173 Tg CO/yr and 184 Tg CO/yr, respectively, compared to the a priori of 95 Tg CO/yr. In the Indonesian/Australian region, the a posteriori emissions inferred from TES and MOPITT data were 155 Tg CO/yr and 185 Tg CO/yr, respectively, whereas the a priori was 69 Tg CO/yr. The differences between the a posteriori emission estimates obtained from the two datasets are generally less than 20%, and are likely due to the different spatio-temporal sampling of the measurements. The a posteriori emissions significantly improve the simulated distribution of CO, however, large regional residuals remain, reflecting systematic errors in the analysis. For example, the a posteriori emissions obtained from both datasets do not completely reduce the underestimate in the model of CO column abundances over the southern tropical Atlantic, southern Africa, and over the Indian Ocean, where biases of 3–7% remain. Over eastern Asia the a posteriori emissions overestimate the CO column abundances by about 3–6%. These residuals reflect the sensitivity of the top-down source estimates to systematic errors in the analysis. Our results indicate that improving the accuracy of top-down emission estimates will require further characterization of model biases (chemical and transport) and the use of spatial-temporal inversion resolutions consistent with the information content of the observations.

First as Sociology, Then as Geography

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43
Author(s):  
Justin Tse
Keyword(s):  
Social Geography ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Ideological Work ◽  
The Way

This essay reviews Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus's New Age Spiritualities: Rethinking Religion. It shows that their attempt to redefine religion through new age spiritualities is actually an attempt to impose an economically elite social geography onto religious studies as a social fact. My central argument is that this effort in turn reveals that religious studies serves as a sociological factory for liberal economic ideologies. It suggests that to mitigate this ideological work, a shift toward critical geography in religious studies is the way forward.

A priori/a posteriori

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinrich Schepers ◽  
Giorgio Tonelli ◽  
Rudolf Eisler
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Posteriori

Physical Failure Analysis Techniques for Front-End-of-Line Defect Analysis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Doyle ◽  
Lawrence Benedict ◽  
Fritz Christian Awitan
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Focused Ion Beam ◽  
Ion Beam ◽  
Gate Oxide ◽  
Top Down ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
First Case ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Scanning Transmission

Abstract Novel techniques to expose substrate-level defects are presented in this paper. New techniques such as inter-layer dielectric (ILD) thinning, high keV imaging, and XeF2 poly etch overflow are introduced. We describe these techniques as applied to two different defects types at FEOL. In the first case, by using ILD thinning and high keV imaging, coupled with focused ion beam (FIB) cross section and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM,) we were able to judge where to sample for TEM from a top down perspective while simultaneously providing the top down images giving both perspectives on the same sample. In the second case we show retention of the poly Si short after removal of CoSi2 formation on poly. Removal of the CoSi2 exposes the poly Si such that we can utilize XeF2 to remove poly without damaging gate oxide to reveal pinhole defects in the gate oxide. Overall, using these techniques have led to 1) increased chances of successfully finding the defects, 2) better characterization of the defects by having a planar view perspective and 3) reduced time in localizing defects compared to performing cross section alone.

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