Is a priori knowledge possible?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
Wayne92587
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by Wayne92587 »

Knowledge in order exist must be of a Reality, Something that exists in the material sense of the word, as an objective Reality, that is measurable as to location and momentum in Space-Time, that can be experienced.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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Once one ever uses a term-algebra or anything with languages, you end up in set-theory or even category theory. Whence achieving of formalization even if you use the word sythesis , you describe a formalism that you write down in a language, thus is describable in the term of sets. If one uses a clear description what you've said even if you describe it in metaphysical ways, you use a signature of a language. Natural language computing does this partially. Once having an uncertainty , you attach a probability measure as a concept of description. If you cannot describe something in a language perhaps the previously mentioned ansatz could be erroneous. But if you can formulate your phrases in word a language , a signature or somekind formula this can be always described by set-theory and higher order logic , although the relations used are complicated. AI would be useless if this wouldn't be the ansatz. Your intuition is just a phrase offered in a moment of time, saying something about something uncertain. So a set/logic description of something to come. Because it is uncertain one can use probability theory to judge about these things and use statistical tests to calculate correlations (as a fitting test like chi-square etc.) . So all this isn't changed it's just a different perspective.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by Hereandnow »

SimpleGuy
Your intuition is just a phrase offered in a moment of time, saying something about something uncertain. So a set/logic description of something to come. Because it is uncertain one can use probability theory to judge about these things and use statistical tests to calculate correlations (as a fitting test like chi-square etc.) . So all this isn't changed it's just a different perspective.
So let me paraphrase, and a little more, to see if a take your point rightly. Language is performed in time, and therefore, since the future is always uncertain-- and even the certainty of apriority carries with it the unseen next moment, or minute-- language is always about uncertainty. And therefore, it is reasonable to take any existing language formula, that is inherently future oriented regardless what it is, and reconstrue it in probablistic terms (just as a physicist has the prerogative to reconstrue 'I'm going for a walk' in very detailed of technical jargon of her own. Recasting the world in more detailed language is what scientists do).

I only want to make clear that you are working with the assumption that there are no absolutes, and certainty, or apriority, cannot be taken as an absolute, but only as theory, (theory IS the dynamic of taking something as a conditional "if....then" in time. All knowledge is theory) that is, as something contingent and can be redone, reconceived, is defeasable, if you will; and since being contingent it is subject to analysis, it fits into a body of ideas: these would be, well, the entirety of the logical and coherent language itself. You are defending a coherence theory of apiori knowledge.

So one is supposed to ignore the intuition that claims certainty, for this claim is also a projection into the future, for it is "performed" on the cusp of a future event. I observe a billiards ball striking another and infer cause, in part, the part that is indefeasable, certain, based on the apriori intuition that every event must have a cause. The rest is subject to doubt: I could be dreaming, and there are no real balls at all; these could be holographic images; and so forth. But the apriority sustains, intuitively. Intuitively it cannot be doubted, until we fit this intuition into a broader and more authoritative concept: that of the probablistic nature of all language-in-a-temporal-dynamic that says the future is uncertain!

I don't know about you, but I find this interesting. Which is to be trusted? Both claims occur in time: the intuition of apriority in causality and those that are in play in pronouncing a probabilistic interpretation. The one that possesses my thinking now is the insistence of causal apriority. To deny this is like embracing the principle of ex nihilo: a very powerful and absolutely insisting intuitive prohibition.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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Intuition is just your evalutation of your personal neural network called brain for a certain situation. This means due to your own personal achievement of skills you've trained your network and with it evaluate some kind of bayes-probability if something is more or less probable or not. Watson ,the most famous AI-programme works with these sort of algorithms and can compete with humans in jeopardy. One should notice that situations, for us mostly inherently stochastic can have at least intrisic rules to find out. A utility function to evaluate the probability of things to happen can even beat in expert systems, true human experts and is even capable of learning more. Once the computer science experiment will succeed that you don't know whether you talk to a human or a computer is from the pure source of communication indistinguishable , the same could occur even for intuition , through the usage of bayes-nets and neural-networks, inference systems as well as support vector machines. If one ever cannot distinguish from the communication if the machine has more intuition than the human beeing for a most general situation, you shouldn't wonder that one is capable to model a priory knowledge on a machine in terms of mathematics.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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The truly ingenious intuition is mostly descendent from the random way to learn in situations , sutch that different than normal subjects are associated in your memory for a situtation and in addition from the algorithm and systematic way to treat a certain problem.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by Hereandnow »

SimpleGuy

Intuition is just your evalutation of your personal neural network called brain for a certain situation. This means due to your own personal achievement of skills you've trained your network and with it evaluate some kind of bayes-probability if something is more or less probable or not.
Puzzling: intuition is MY evaluation of my neural network? You mean to say that I, this agency of judgment, am responsible, through my personal achievement of skills, for the way I intuit the world? I guess you are not talking about sensory intuition (I perceive "redly"), but rather interpretative intuition, as in the act of calling a piece of wood a baseball bat.

Sure, when I use the bat, I am deploying uncountable interpretative acts implcitly, for beneath the skin of this intuitive simplicity there lies a long history of learning about bats, encountering them in different contexts, social and technical; I don't think there is an issue here: even when I see a bat plainly, there is a long personal history of problem solving. (In fact, I find that pragmatism in truth and meaning is likely the best way to understand all knowledge claims, save some. These latter would be apriori)

But when it comes to apriority you seem to be backing the idea that the intuition of necessity is equally accounted for. How do my lived experiences explain an absolute? Again, if its a matter of merely taking up the world in a certain way, then it is easy to see that this way or does not have to be the case. It is not apodictically true that objects fall toward other objects, gravity, that is. It is logically and intuitively possible for the to fall away.

But particularly causality, the ex nihilo of an event. I just don't see it discursively account fior this. Sure, we have to work through and within a matrix of acquired associaltive possibilities in the world to apprehend apriority, but once we are there, endowed with culture and language, all that can be traced back to home, school and society, we confront the apriority of causality: this apple before me must be caused to move. This intuition as such is not learned at all.
The truly ingenious intuition is mostly descendent from the random way to learn in situations , sutch that different than normal subjects are associated in your memory for a situtation and in addition from the algorithm and systematic way to treat a certain problem.
Of course. What about apriority?
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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On the other hand, there is the proposition that absolutes are not absolutes. Derrida loved the double inverted comma to make the point that all out thoughts are bound to context,even the world 'absolute'. But I dont' really buy this, for while I take it that 'intuition' is an unwelcome term in postmodern discussions, I side with with Husserl on this, which means I behold the apriority before me and yield to its authority, for it is not directly analyzable, like a composite term. I think one has to allow the tendency to theorize everything to fall away, allow it to be suspended when it comes to apriority. I know full well this is difficult to demonstrate,as one would have to admit that there is such a thing as a stand alone idea, which is not really defensible. But then, that is the way of an true intuition: it has no defense beyond what it is. I don't think causality is deconstructable at all.

Nor are pain and pleasure, which are far more interesting forms of apriority.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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Since the existence of the BCI-technology (brain computer interface) technology and the invention of television, everybody can measure YOUR intution in comparision to MY intuition. Don't blame anything on me, but just look at the facts, this disciple wouldn't exist, if not even intuition couldn't be explained in a sense of computational neuroscience. It's a simple matter of fact that intuition happens in your brain not in your base -balls.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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Trouble here, SimpleGuy, and this is elusive point, you BCI-technology is a complex concept that itself rises out of the matrix you are supposed to be explaining. It is a clear case of question begging. It is not a technical issue at this point; not yet.

The direction this goes is toward ontology, and this takes one to an examination of the structural features of language, ideas, knowledge claims as such, and so. THESE are also subject to the same objection, the question begging. Then it depends on if there is anything at all that puts itself before your inquiring eyes in this area that is absolute. Apriority makes a kind of claim here, putting before you something that simply cannot be otherwise, like a causeless event. You can make language and a logic into a tool that, through reflection on these themselves delivers the thinking mind from contingency to to possible certainty in the absolute sense. Husserl did this. Postmodern thinking denies this altogether.

This does not set with empirical science, but this is because these people never give a single thought to questioning the nature of the thoughts they produce; not really. They may think they do, but having never read phenomenology, Kant before it, and the tonnage of literature that deals with this matter, they really do not know what it is about. It's not their field.

As for me, I am firmly rooted in the understanding that all knowledge claims are valuative, and that value, what is at the heart of ethics, is antecedent, logically and existentially, to all other issues.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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You err by far for thus i cite this webpage:

http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

As well as a certain article :

Nancy Kanwisher, Marvin M. Chun, Josh Mc Dermont, Patrick J. Ledden

Functional Imaging of human visual recognition,

Elsevier, Cognitive Brain Research

In it , you will achieve a brief introduction into artifact extraction of brain movies.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by SimpleGuy »

The article already appeared in 1996, deary this is up to date.

A more tabloid depiction of this topic is given in the follwing webpage:

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188 ... pathically
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by SimpleGuy »

Your ontological research plays a role for crime prediction systems based partially on bci data transferred via the internet.
Look at this webpage.

https://qz.com/513125/hitachi-says-it-c ... ey-happen/
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by SimpleGuy »

Hopefully you shouldn't believe that firms like fujitsu or hitachi are somekind of metaphysical superstitious. They are real world scientists without illusions.
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Hereandnow
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

Post by Hereandnow »

SimpleGuy:
You err by far
Expected that.

I did watch the videos. And may I say this technology is fascinating. I have always had a great deal of respect and admiration for cutting edge technology.

If you would take the time to read Heidegger's Being and Time from cover to cover, you would get this. You would understand, that when we encounter an object, a memory, a mood, when we have an encounter of any kind with the world, there is before us: presence. It doens't matter how advanced the technical understanding is associated with this presence, the presence is what is always already there, logically prior to words and judgment. Now you could just ignore this and get on with your theorizing in physics or mathematics, but the question abides nevertheless: What does it mean to know something qua knowing?

Apriority is a presence in the world. And any discursive account of this actually possesses the same apriority; it's in the form of a proposition qua proposition. And you may not explain something using the very thing the nature of which is at issue. That is question begging. Wittgenstein knew this. See his Tractatus.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Is a priori knowledge possible?

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I already did that for 3 times , but you interpretate the text of : "Sein und Zeit" in a different way than i do. What he really means with it, that the ontological context of the talks that you do to your colleagues changes the reality into a different shape just through the several meanings of the conversations contained in a hermeneutical sense. This is more the apriority of his way to understand it in the "Zuhandenheit" , beeing graspable, of the reality he somehow perceives. You interpretate his texts by far more positive than i do.
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