Ive just read somewhere that W.V.O. Quine is a philosopher of A priori thought. Though ive never read Quine, my impression from other people on this site, mainly Dunamis, was that Quine would not be one to believe in A priori thought…
Maybe I am just misunderstanding terms. Is there any relation between the A priori/ a posteriori distinction and the analytic/synthetic distionction? By my understanding of both, they are at least similar concepts if not the same. And as I understood it, Quine argued against this distinction, concluding something like: All knowledge comes from experience, bassicly the empericist view. So wouldn’t Quine believe there to be no such thing as A priori thought?
No confusion. In his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” Quine attacks the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, and the a priori/a posteriori dichotomy. (It isn’t " a priori thought" (I have no idea what that would mean). It is “a priori knowledge” which the empricist Quine attacks. The terms, “analytic” and 'synthetic" refer to judgements or propositions. Analytic propositions (like all dogs are dogs, or whatever will be will be) are true (or false) in virtue of their constituent terms “true by definition”. Synthetic propositions are not true (or false) by definition. E.g. All dogs are carniverous. (True, but not definitionally true). A priori propositions are (if there are any) known independently of sense-experience. One example is supposed to be, all red objects are colored objects. A posteriori propositions are known dependently on sense-experience. E.G. All dogs are carniverous.
The logical positivists, and logical empiricists, held, not that the two pairs of concepts meant the same thing (they were not synonymous), but that they referred to the same classes of propositions. They were extensionally equivalent. In the way that the class of creatures with hearts, and the class of creatures with livers, are extensionally equivalent. Every creature with a heart, is a creature with a liver, and every creature with a liver is a creature with a heart. So that the terms. “creature with a heart” and “creature with a liver” name the same classes of objects. But, of course, “creature with a heart” and “creature with a kidney” are not synonomous terms. They do not mean the same thing. So that, in the same way, empiricists held that every analytic proposition was an a priori proposition, and every a priori proposition was an analytic proposition. (But “analytic” and “a priori” do not mean the same thing).
Quine, as I said, repudiated both distincitions. He certainly did not “believe in a priori thought”. He would not have had any idea what that phrase could have meant.
the a priori/ a posterori distinction is the difference between analytic and synthetic statements…
a priori statements are judged before experience and are analytic…
(all batchelors are unmarried males, 1+1=2…)
they are true by definition and they tell one nothing about the world as experienced… if one negates the sentence and the result is a self contradiction, the sentence is analytic…
a posterori statements are judged after experience and are synthetic…
(this ball is red, this soup is hot…)
they are judged true by experienced sense impressions and are not self contradictory when negated…
in regard to your query, quine would regard a priori thought as definitely existing (the amount of possible a priori “knowledge” for quine is questionable), but certainly not providing empirical knowledge
It seems there are varrying opinions on what Quine said…
Kenneth, am I interpreting you correctly by saying that you believe Quine would not believe in the existence of A priori knowledge?
And Imp, would I be correct in saying you believe Quine believed in the existance of A priori knowledge, as limited as it may be?
If my interpretations of your responses are correct, than I would have to say my very limited impression of Quine would lead me to believe Kenneth’s response…