If by 'a priori knowledge' we mean 'background knowledge' or 'conventional wisdom', no great harm is done. We may equate the thing with Bayesian priors and move on. Kant, however, defines it thus- By the term “knowledge a priori,” therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience.
It is fine to say this of Revealed Scripture which being wholly imperative has no alethic component of which we could have experience- e.g. harrowing Hell or chatting to God. Indeed, the major religions consider their Holy Book to be 'uncreated'. What Kant is suggesting is that there is some experience we all have which is independent of any contingent circumstance of our own existence. But what experiment can we do which assures us this is the case? Some say that if you die and are brought back to life you will have a particular type of experience which is proof of the afterlife. Others say that if you take drugs and suck their cock you will lose your 'false consciousness' and 'materialistic delusions' and overcome the hegemony of Patriarchy & Neo-Liberalism such that you will give all your money to your pimp rather than meanly keeping back some for yourself in order to buy a burger.
We may say 'a priori knowledge' is an 'intension'. But its 'extension' is empty or only knowable at the end of mathematical time. Consider the 'black cabbie' in London who has done 'the Knowledge'- i.e. was tested on his ability to get from any street address to any other by the shortest route. He did not have posteriori knowledge but a 'skeletal' knowledge base which he found it useful to update from time to time.
Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience.
Fuck off! We gain empirical knowledge by updating an epistemic map or model in a routine or protocol bound, manner. As for what we experience, we forget it if it isn't 'mission critical' or confirm it if it is.
Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure.
If one thing exists a priori, then the existential predicate entails the necessary existence of at least one thing. But this means there is an ontological proof of at least one thing- even if it isn't the God of St. Anselm. If that thing necessarily exists then either it is everything or there is some sufficiency condition by which all things are within its web of predication.
That's why claiming 'a priori Knowledge' exists (unless you are a mystic or a Theist) is pure horse-shit.
Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, “Every change has a cause,” is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience.
If so, the same thing could be said about 'cause' and 'every' and 'has'. Indeed, since Knowledge is not a priori, nothing in it can be so.
'Kant's dove', famously, thinks it can fly better if there were no air. But doves and fishes aren't stupid. They know that if the tide or the breeze are in their favour, they get to their objective faster. It is only when they turn against them that they might wish to transcend the element in which they must have their life.
Kant believed that
III. Philosophy stands in need of a Science which shall Determine the Possibility, Principles, and Extent of Human Knowledge “a priori”
Sadly, nobody stood in need of Philosophy. If you want to get rid of Kings and Bishops, just chop their fucking heads off and repent your sins at leisure. Philosophy can slay no dragons. It can merely foul its own nest.
Mathematical science affords us a brilliant example, how far, independently of all experience,
The cunt didn't get that geometry or analysis weren't independent of all experience. They arose because they were useful in improving empirical outcomes
we may carry our a priori knowledge.
Gauss and Grassmann and Galois, not to mention Hamilton and Lobachevsky etc. carried it yet further by rejecting the dogmatic straitjacket of 'synthetic a priori' truths. They prevailed because their work was useful. The shibboleth of 'necessary truth' wasn't. Sadly some remained in thrall to it and wasted everybody's time.
It is true that the mathematician occupies himself with objects and cognitions only in so far as they can be represented by means of intuition.
Thankfully, that had never been the case.
But this circumstance is easily overlooked, because the said intuition can itself be given a priori, and therefore is hardly to be distinguished from a mere pure conception.
The Brits tended to be 'conceptualists' and thus fell behind the Continent. Anal-tickle philosophy inherits that Misology.
Deceived by such a proof of the power of reason, we can perceive no limits to the extension of our knowledge.
There are none. It isn't the case that just coz a dude is bleck, we can't learn a lot from him. Sadly, we can't learn much from Kant however racist he might have been.
The light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose resistance it feels,
Why would it feel resistance if the wind is at its back?
might imagine that her movements would be far more free and rapid in airless space.
No. Its wings would be useless in a vacuum. This silly cunt didn't get that Galileo, Newton etc. were able to get to better equations of motion by abstracting from air-resistance and wind velocity etc.
just in the same way did Plato, abandoning the world of sense because of the narrow limits it sets to the understanding, venture upon the wings of ideas beyond it, into the void space of pure intellect.
Fuck off! He ventured, upon the wings of words, into the space of Musaeus from whom his patrician ancestors would have been partially descended on the distaff side.
He did not reflect that he made no real progress by all his efforts; for he met with no resistance which might serve him for a support,
Socrates met with resistance. Plato was careful to keep clear of 'resistance' which is why he lived long and died of natural causes.
as it were, whereon to rest, and on which he might apply his powers, in order to let the intellect acquire momentum for its progress.
Plato's big idea was that Math was important. Since there still are Mathematical Platonists, he succeeded. Kant failed. There was no 'bridge' between his Metaphysics and actual Physics which is why in his last fascicles he thinks perhaps his system reduces to 'galvanism' or 'Zoraster'. In other words there must be some being, or energizing principle, which incarnates Transcendence. The trouble here is that Christ is good enough for this purpose and there's a pretty decent Church within walking distance for the vast majority of Europeans.
It is, indeed, the common fate of human reason
there was little of that commodity in Kant's neck of the woods.
in speculation, to finish the imposing edifice of thought
pile of shite more like
as rapidly as possible, and then for the first time to begin to examine whether the foundation is a solid one or no.
It is shit. What you are actually doing, when you establish a 'necessary' truth, is shitting not just your pants but also the Professorial chair which you occupy.
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