a priori
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knowledge or justification independent of experience
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, a priori connects to a priori and a posteriori.
It is catalogued under the topic Printworthy redirects.
Vinony links it to 42 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- knowledge
- Part of
- a priori and a posteriori
Show 4 more facts
- described by source
- Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
- opposite of
- a posteriori
- topic's main category
- Category:A priori
- Commons category
- A priori
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
A priori (‘from the earlier’) and a posteriori (‘from the later’) are Latin phrases used in philosophy and linguistics to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. Roughly speaking, a proposition is known or justified a priori if it is known or justified independently of any experience (beyond the experience necessary to understand the proposition); instead, it is known or justified a posteriori if its knowledge and/or justification depends on empirical evidence. For example, the proposition ‘It is sunny in London today’ can be known (if true) a posteriori, whereas the proposition ‘Either it is sunny or it is not sunny in London today’ can be known a priori.
Fields of knowledge where a priori justification is predominant are, for example, mathematics and formal logic; by contrast, most of the sciences generally involve a posteriori justification.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “a priori” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.