I'm really only blogging about half the things that I would like to; I figure that for everything I jot down, it means another post which I added earlier will be ignored. However, I also want to write stuff out before I forget it, and so here it goes: some variations on a theme of Scotus.
Thought #1: I see that Scotus is often criticized for having such a complicated system of logic. These criticisms are often directed at him by those who wish to get back down to reality. But I would think that the complicated logic is precisely and indication of Scotus' commitment to explaining reality! Those who get too caught up in abstractions have simple, or at least simpler, logical systems; just chop out the stuff you can't explain and be done with it (*cough* Ockham *cough*). Complicated logic is usually a sign that a person is grappling with the nitty-gritties of the situation and not content to let the abstraction do all the work.
Thought #2: We need a category for the analytic a posteriori. We have the analytic a priori (immediate and necessary), synthetic a posteriori (mediate and contingent), and synthetic a priori (mediate and necessary). But it seems that there are immediate and contingent beliefs (and therefore, analytic a posteriori): I exist, I see, I perceive such-and-such. We might be able to transform any of these statements to an analytic a priori statement by teasing out logical entailments, but this would miss the actual grounding of these statements. I don't logically conclude by the meaning of the words "I exist" and their entailments that I exist, I just have an immediate cognition of the contingent fact of my existence. So, we have 4 forms of knowledge: rational, empricial, transcendental, and existential. (Yes, this is also based on Scotus, though he like other Aristotelians would explain the difference between "transcendental" and "rational" knowledge differently).
4 comments:
Hey Michael!
As you can imagine, this is highly disputed territory, but a number of Thomists would put first principles under analytic a posteriori. Viz. You start with the mind as tabula rasa. As the person experiences the world (a posteriori), she discovers the immutable principles (analytic) that are embedded in creation and recognized by way of exemplar causality. Thus, for example, causality is considered analytic a posteriori by some Thomists, and I tend to favor that notion myself.
Huh, I'll have to give some thought to that.
As I view agent/volitional causality as the basic form of causality, I would put instances of that under existential knowledge (and hence, analytic a posteriori). But I wouldn't have put event/natural causation in the same category. However, I'll have to consider the role of exemplars in natural causation.
Today is the first day I have read your blog in quite a while (I've been occupying myself elsewhere), and I've obviously missed a lot. I'm still reading through your other posts.
Here's the relevant comment for this post:
I think of "analytic" as meaning "true by definition, or as an explication of the meaning of the concepts in this proposition", and "synthetic" as roughly meaning "meaningful but not analytic".
Propositions that one believes as a result of direct perception would surely be a posteriori, because they are through perception. But this wouldn't make them analytic in the sense above, even if they are self-evident, in Plantinga's sense of "basic", that is "not believed on the basis of other propositions, via an inference."
In sum: I don't understand why you are equating analytic with immediate and synthetic with mediate, although you probably have a reason.
I might be shifting the use of the terms from their historical background. It seems that part of the reason why "true by definition" matters, and why it gives us certain knowledge, is because of its immediacy. We see it, we know it, in one act. The synthetic a posteriori, however, gains its uncertainty from mediation. We must put things together in order to arrive at such beliefs. Also, statements like "I exist" don't seem quite to fall into the "a priori" category, but bear a certain likeness.
In the end, though, if the terminology doesn't work, then we can just go with the two polarities of "immediate - mediate" and "rational - empirical."
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