An Inferentialist Conception of the A Priori

Abstract

When philosophers explain the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, they usually characterize the a priori negatively, as involving a kind of justification that does not come from experience. But this only raises the question: If we ever do have a priori justification for anything, where does this justification come from? One answer often given by those who believe that we sometimes have a priori justification is that it comes from a special faculty of “intuition” or “rational insight”. But without any further explanation of how this faculty of intuition or insight operates, appealing to this special faculty seems to be no more than a label for the problem rather than a solution to it. For these reasons, it seems that we need a new conception of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori. I shall propose such a new conception here. Most discussions of the a priori have focused either on the difference between a priori knowledge and empirical knowledge, or else on the difference between beliefs that are justified a priori and beliefs that are justified a posteriori. In developing my proposal, I shall take a different approach. I shall start by initially focusing, not on knowledge or on the justification of beliefs, but instead on the justification of inferences and inferential dispositions; only after explaining how the distinction works in this inferential case shall I turn to the justification of beliefs.