A Priori Workshop: Finn Spicer

In his talk ("A priori knowledge - you either love it or hate it"), Finn Spicer claimed that there is no urgent reason for naturalism to resist the concept of a priori knowledge. To support this claim, he raised a number of semantic points. If meaning is reference, to begin with, we encounter difficulties discriminating between a priori and a posteriori truths. The sentence “Napoléon is Napoléon” is an uninformative tautology and a priori true. The sentence “Napoléon is Bonaparte” is informative and a posteriori true. Both sentences have the same meaning, however, because they have a common referent. So, reference doesn’t give us any clue why they differ with regard to aprioricity. If the picture is extended to include sense, Finn claimed, these difficulties do not arise. For instance, the sense of ‘Napoléon’ is the knowledge necessary for having a concept of Napoléon. Or it is the conception associated with ‘Napoléon’ (Napoléon was a man from Corsica, won the battle of Austerlitz, spent his last years in exile etc).

Finn now suggested (if I understood him correctly) that aprioricity comes back into this in a naturalism-friendly way if the conception of ‘Napoléon’ is such that it contains bits of knowledge from a reliable source, and is needed to have the concept expressed by the name ‘Napoléon’. This is to say that some Napoléon-knowledge (e.g. Napoléon was a man from Corsica) is necessary to have the Napoléon-concept, and is a priori in that sense, without being knowledge in virtue of its a priori status.

A recurrent criticism of Finn’s approach was that on his account epistemic and semantic matters easily come apart. For the conception of Napoléon to have a priori items (those necessary to have a concept expressed by ‘Napoléon’) is one thing. For these items to be knowledge from a reliable source is another. Even if a conception contains both, they may not (never) be congruent.

A priori workshop: John Callanan

John gave a paper entitled 'Kant's a priori and seeing how things must be'. In it he distinguished between two types of necessity that get talked about, and not always kept apart, in the first Critique. The first is the familiar necessity of synthetic a priori truths about the transcendental structure of experience - the necesary conditions of possibilty of experience that hold with 'strict universality' for any thinker/perceiver as such. The second is the necessity which attaches to certain experiences, so that we literally, in the course of experience, 'see' that, say, a certain temporal ordering of events is necessary rather than contingent. In uncovering this second source of necessary truths, Kant is very roughly doing a kind of phenomenology influenced still very much by the early modern philosophy that preceded him. For instance, very much influenced by Hume's reflections on how sense impressions are given to the mind and ordered by it in certain ways. What Kant changed was the Humean demarcation between the given and constituting elements of experience (for example, the representation from which the concept space is derived is constituted not given for Kant). Also, concepts derived from what is constituted are legitimate for Kant, whereas they are not for Hume. This is because for Kant they are a necessay condition of the very experience in question (for example, the constituting element of the causal principle is a necessary condition for Kant of the possibility of us experiencing certain sorts of temporal order at all).

But John also argued that for a lot of Kant's arguments in the Critique, he is concerned not with so called transcendental arguments, but rather with a phenomenological analysis of the understanding at work in experience. Kant works with quite a rich conception of experience and John's focus was his analysis of how we 'see' that something is the case, like when we see that in turning a cube a certain coloured side is bound to reappear at a certain point. We might say then, that the focus is on an a 'seeing that' which is suffuse with the conceptual activity of the understanding.

This general approach has ramifications for how we view Kant's philosophical project. John argued that we tend to see Kant through Frege's anti-psychologistic spectacles, that we see him as concerned with the conditions of possibility of thinking per se. But on John's view, Kant is far closer to Hume. He is involved in a phenomenology of experience that uncovers constituting elements that are merely human. Of course, this interpretation will effect how we think of the Kantian a priori. That is, on John's account it quantifies over a far more limited domain of individuals than it is often taken to.

I for one think John's approach is fruitful and probably right, certainly as a reading of the Aesthetic and the Analogies. But there seems to be a problem over the Transcendental Deduction, which appears to be concerned with the conditions of possibility of thinking as such. But there is a way out: perhaps Kant is concerned in those sections, as McDowell has argued, with another problem: that of intentionality. The TD could then be seen as arguing for certain a priori concepts that constitute thoughts and perceptions alike, so that perceptions have a certain minimal conceptual content. Kant's universalism about logic then becomes detatchable from the TD and it can fit with John's overrall interpretative approach of seeing Kant as concerned with analysing phenomenologically the understanding at work in experience.

Nature of Naturalism: Chris Hookway

Chris Hookway, in his paper 'Quinean Holism and Quinean Naturalism', offered an account of the sort of naturalism that we could expect to arise from the rejection of the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. A familiar way of thinking about this is that the resulting naturalism sees philosophy as a branch of natural science. This is encouraged by Quine's own suggestion that naturalised epistemology be seen as a part of psychology. But when Quine offers concrete examples of naturalised epistemology, he often useses logic and mathematics. This seems reasonable, since logic and mathematics are not, on the Quinean view, to be seen as fundamentally separate from the natural sciences. It suggests, however, that Quinean naturalism can model philosophy on those disciples rather than on the natural sciences themselves. Quine focus on psychology, Chris suggested, can be largely understood to be a consequence of his focus on the (empiricist) concern with the relation between experiences and observational beliefs, and his desire to defend a causal and non-justificatory construal of it.

One of the issues that came up in discussion concerned Quine's claim that naturalised epistemology, just like previous epistemology, was concerned with the relation between evidence and theory. If experiences cause but do not justify observational beliefs, then it seems odd to think of them as evidence. One would expect, rather, that the observational beliefs themselves be thought of as the evidence. But this would disqualify Quine's interest in the relation between experience and belief as a part of epistemology and, if so, we still don't have an explanation of why Quine wanted to see epistemological questions as psychological ones.

Reading Group: Huw Price, Naturalism without Representation

Price argues against a view he calls 'object naturalism', whilst defending a view he calls 'subject naturalism'. The former is the view that, "all there is is the world studied by science...all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge." (73). The latter is the view that, "Science tells us that we humans are natural creatures, and if the claims of philosophy conflict with this view, then philosophy needs to give way." (73).

As I understand it, the case against object naturalism involves the following claims:

(1) If object naturalism is to stand a chance of being well motivated, it must assume a substantial account of semantic relations, such as reference.

(2) An object naturalist needs to offer a naturalistic, that is empirical, account of the semantic relations themselves.

(3) An empirical investigation into the semantic notions must treat 'semantic irrealism' as a live empirical option - semantic irrealism being the claim that, for example, 'reference' fails to refer.

(4) It is impossible to make sense of the empirical possibility of this sort of semantic irrealism, since in asserting the irrealism one has employed the semantic notion of reference.

Price says of this argument that, "it exposes what is inevitably a nonnaturalistic presupposition in the leading contemporary conception of what is involved in taking science seriously in philosophy." (81). Interestingly, it looks rather like a sort of transcendental argument - naturalism is undermined by the fact that it must make a nonnaturalistic presupposition about reference.

He goes on to argue that his own subject naturalism fares better is it needn't assume a substantial account of reference. Thus it's countenancing the possibility that science will not force us to employ semantic notions is not the denial that 'reference' refers, but the refusal to say anything about reference.


I want to say something about (1) and (2). First (1):

(1) is the claim that object naturalism is inconsistent with a deflationary account of the semantic notions. Price suggests that this follows from the view that the 'data' for a naturalistic account in a given domain is linguistic: "we note that humans (ourselves or others) employ the term "X" in language, or the concept X, in thought. In the light of a commitment to object naturalism...we come to wonder how what these speakers are thereby talking or thinking about could be the kind of thing studied by science."(76).

Price spends some time defending this linguistic conception of the 'data' of naturalism. But I'm interested in the move from the linguistic conception to the claim that naturalism presupposes a substantial account of reference. His argument is that if a deflationary account is accepted, then there really is no difference between taking the 'data' to be linguistic practice or non-linguisitic reality. This is because, on the deflationary view, saying that the sentence, "Snow is white" is true, is just to say that snow is white.

It seems to me that this argument is only convincing if our reasons for believing in the linguistic conception of the 'data' are simultaneously reasons for disbelieving in the non-linguistic reality conception of the 'data'. But are they? I won't go into the discussion of Lewis and the Canberra Plan, but it strikes me that the point about non-cognitivism loses some of its force. Price argues that since some naturalistic views are views about linguistic practice (e.g. non-cogntivism), then they will simply be ignored if we take the 'data' to be non-linguisitic reality. But this seems wrong, if the reason for taking the data to be non-linguistic reality is a deflationary account of reference. This view wouldn't ignore non-cognitivism, it would presumably consider itself to have some reason for thinking it false, and that is a different matter.

Now (3). (3) is the claim that an object naturalist needs to offer a naturalistic, that is empirical, account of the semantic relations themselves. This seems to be something that Price takes to be too obvious to really argue for. But I wonder whether a naturalist need accept it. For, Price's definition of object naturalism includes both ontological and epistemological naturalists, let's say, physicalists and empiricists. But what reason is there to think a that a physicalist need accept (3) unless he or she is also committed to empricism?

Price says that, "Naturalism of this kind [object naturalism] seems committed to the empirical contingency of semantic relations. For any given term or sentence, it must be to some extent an empirical matter whether,and if so to what, that term refers" (81). But this doesn't seem to be an obvious conseqence of a committment to physicalism. So, it strikes me that someone who thinks that "all there is is the world studied by science", even if 'science' is read as 'physics' (note, quite a lot hangs on whether psychology counts as a science, and if so which branches it it), need think that the proper investigation of semantic notions is empirical in the above sense.

But even if one thinks that, "all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge" (73), there may still be room to reject (3). For we are owed an account of what counts as scientific knowledge. Here's a thought. A great deal of scientific knowledge is achieved via the method of inference to the best explanation. Perhaps the best explanation of certain aspects of our competence with semantic, mathematical and logical terms is that we possess some knowledge the canonical justification of which is not experiential, i.e. is apriori. Such a view will not, of course, be an empiricism. But given its reliance on inference to the best explanation, one might be tempted to accord it the status 'scientific'. Maybe, maybe not. What does seem true to me is that (2) is in need of more support that Price gives it in this paper.