tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22363645.post8658752059137487258..comments2021-04-20T04:35:44.650-07:00Comments on armchair investigations: the nature of apriori contingenciesBrian Rabernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05189164021937523325noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22363645.post-46890283601487396222008-09-10T22:46:00.000-07:002008-09-10T22:46:00.000-07:00I find the argument against contingent a priori kn...I find the argument against contingent a priori knowledge pretty convincing: if things could be either A or B, then I can't know for certain without looking which of these ways they are. The function analogy tells us that I can know whether A is the case without knowing absolutely everything about the world (without knowing the exact input to the function that is the proposition A). But that doesn't show that there is anything wrong with the claim that I need *some* empirical information.<BR/><BR/>I think I don't quite understand what is meant by "an priori way of knowing about the actual world that is not a way of knowing the same thing about every possible world". Suppose I know that a sentence S has a constant diagonal, and therefore that it is true, no matter what the world is like. This gives me a priori knowledge that S is true only if my knowledge that S has a constant diagonal is itself a priori. But if it is, then arguably 'S is true' is also necessary (even though 'S' may be contingent).<BR/><BR/>The only uncontroversial way I can see for defending a priori knowledge of contingencies is by redefining it so that the argument doesn't apply any more, for instance, by turning it into the claim that there are true instances of the schema "x knows a priori that S and S is contingent".wohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17285766057687913879noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22363645.post-49172614552945345852008-09-09T09:58:00.000-07:002008-09-09T09:58:00.000-07:00I found your blog as a result of an ongoing google...I found your blog as a result of an ongoing google search for contingency theory, which just seems to lead me to a pile of books on business management and leadership, which wasn't what I intended. You were, of course, the happy exception.<BR/><BR/>Not that you got me to exactly what I was looking for-the two sentence, philosophical definition of contingency theory, which some hapless customer introduced me to once upon a time as a 16 year old retail servant, and which changed my whole perspective. Somewhere in the intervening 14 years, I've lost the complete definition, the originating concept, and my personal redifinition. That whole story is the most recent post on my blog, if you are interested. (www.entropy.wordpress.com)<BR/><BR/>Otherwise, nice blog for reminding me how much I *should* have read and have not yet gotten to.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com