What anti-individualists cannot know a priori

Abstract

Anti-individualism and privileged self-knowledge may be incompatible if the attempt to hold both has the absurd consequence that one could know a priori propositions that are knowable only empirically. This would be so if such an attempt entailed that one could know a priori both the contents of one's own thoughts and the anti-individualistic entailments from those thought-contents to the world. For then one could also come to know a priori (by simple deduction) the empirical conditions entailed by one's thoughts. But I shall argue that there is no construal of 'a priori knowledge' that could be used to raise an incompatibilist objection of this sort.Note first that knowledge of one's own thought-contents would not count as a priori according to the usual criteria for knowledge of this kind. 1 Surely, then, incompatibilists are using this term to refer to some other, stipulatively defined, epistemic property. But could this be, as suggested by McKinsey (1991: 9), the property of being knowable 'just by thinking' or

Self‐Knowledge and Externalism about Empty Concepts

“…This notion of the apriori is contentious, but we shall ignore that. For discussion, see Davies (), Nuccetelli () and McLaughlin (2000; 2003). …”

Reassessing the Case against Evidential Externalism

“…It is worth mentioning that the notion of Privileged Access, as it appears in McKinsey's papers, is stated in terms of 'a priori' knowledge rather than 'armchair knowledge'. However, since McKinsey and others in this literature intend for 'a priori' knowledge to include knowledge on the basis of introspection, this seems like unfortunate and possibly misleading terminology: see, for example,Nuccetelli 1999, Brown 2004: 23-4, and Farkas 2008: 130 for relevant discussion. 7 For a useful overview of responses to the paradox, seeKallestrup 2012: ch 5.…”