Jonathan Ichikawa's Blog
Posted in papers on Apr 16th, 2010
Experimental Philosophy and Apriority, Draft of 15 April, 2010
One of the more visible recent developments in philosophical methodology is the experimental philosophy movement. On its surface, the experimentalist challenge looks like a dramatic threat to the apriority of philosophy; ‘experimentalist’ is nearly antonymic with ‘aprioristic’. This appearance, I suggest, is misleading; the experimentalist critique is [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Mar 2nd, 2010
I’ve long been troubled by failing to understand what ‘fallibilism’ and ‘infallibilism’ are supposed to amount to. Here’s an example of the sort of discussion I find puzzling.
Bohghossian and Peacocke write:
A priori justification is not infallible justification. Just as one may be justified in believing an ordinary empirical proposition that is empirically revealed on empirical [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Feb 18th, 2010
I know that there is snow outside; this knowledge is based in part on my visual experience. When I look out the window, I have experiences that partially constitute seeing snow. I also know that squares have four sides. Arguably, this knowledge is independent of experience, depending only on my conceptual competence, or rational capacities, [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Feb 10th, 2010
A priori justification or knowledge is meant to be independent from experience in some sense. But it’s a bit tricky to explain just what that sense is. It’s usually allowed that there are some roles for experience that are merely enabling in a way that is consistent with apriority. For example, maybe you think particular [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Dec 1st, 2009
I’ve just written up an abstract for a paper I’m thinking about writing on the bearing of x-phi on the alleged apriority of philosophy. Short answer: there is none—even if the x-phi critics are right about the need for philosophers to be doing more science. I’ve posted it on the Arché Methodology Blog; I’d welcome [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Nov 19th, 2009
This week I’m thinking about Laurence Bonjour’s In Defense of Pure Reason. In §4.4, Bonjour offers what he takes to be a very straightforward argument against the infallibility of rational insight: just look, he says, at all the examples of alleged cases of rational insight that are false — some have been empirically refuted, and [...]
Posted in papers on Jul 21st, 2009
Is Imagination A Priori? Draft of 21 July, 2009. Will be subsumed into a longer piece.
Sometimes, we come to new knowledge via imaginative processes; plausibly, sometimes, such imagination plays an indispensably warranting role. Is such a role for imagination inconsistent with the apriority of our new knowledge? Stephen Yablo has argued that a certain kind [...]
Posted in Philosophy on Jun 7th, 2009
Stephen Yablo argues that knowledge of things like shapes, insofar as they depend on visual imagination, cannot be a priori. Here is one of his arguments:
[S]ome imagined reactions are a better guide to real reactions than others. Imagined shape reactions are a good guide, you say, and you are probably right. But it is hard [...]