Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and the Constitutive A Priori

Abstract

On the basis of what I call physico-formalist philosophy of mathematics, I will develop an amended account of the Kantian-Reichenbachian conception of constitutive a priori. It will be shown that the features (attributes, qualities, properties) attributed to a real object are not possessed by the object as a "thing-in-itself"; they require a physical theory by means of which these features are constituted. It will be seen that the existence of such a physical theory implies that a physical object can possess a property only if other contingently existing physical objects exist; therefore, the intrinsicextrinsic distinction is flawed.

Physicalism Without the Idols of Mathematics

“…'Constitutive' in the sense of Reichenbach's conception of constitutive principles of coordination, that is, the way in which physical things are coordinated to mathematical objects (Reichenbach, 1965). In fact, due to the holistic nature of semantics and the intertwining of semantics with the truth of the theory as a whole, the constitutive role goes not to some separate operational definitions of isolated notions or quantities-as in traditional operationalism-but to the theory (L, S, U) as a whole; that is, to the whole formal system L and to the whole, empirically established, semantic construction (Szabó, 2020). So the formal system L is constitutive, in this partial sense, of our knowledge of the physical world.…”

A végtelen idóluma • The Idol of Infinity

“…Ez a példa rávilágít arra, hogy a szemantika, és ezáltal az elmélet egésze, az elméletben használt formális rendszerrel együtt, konstitutív szerepet játszik a vi lág entitásokkal és azok attribútumaival történő berendezésében (Reichenbach, 1965;Szabó, 2019).…”