Existential Rationalism: Handling Hume's Fork by Eschauzier Marcel

Author:Eschauzier, Marcel [Eschauzier, Marcel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: XRLMedia
Published: 2021-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

Do we indeed know without experience that a line is the shortest connection between two points? No. A stone doesn’t have a conscious mind and is therefore oblivious of this fact. Having a conscious mind at one’s disposal implies experience since the two are, in Kant’s words, tautological. A priori sensibilities are an integral part of experience.

Kant considers analytic (predicate not contained in subject) a posteriori (justified by experience) propositions paradoxical and excludes them from his analysis. Existential rationalism understands such statements as a combination of matters of fact and relations of ideas: “The apple is green because I saw it.” Or: “E=mc 2 because the speed of light is independent of the observer’s movement relative to the light source.”

Thus, the existential-rationalist classification of epistemic knowledge remains simply Hume’s Fork, to which it adds the ontic handle of phenomenal experience. As stated in Chapter 5 What is truth? , this ontic knowledge can be considered the necessarily true synthetic a priori knowledge of the world that Kant sought after, even though it doesn’t transpire as a proposition. It is always new knowledge: We remember Heraclitus’: “No man can ever step in the same river twice.” And it doesn’t require empirical justification because, in its immediacy, it is a given that justifies itself.

Kant’s distinction between synthetic and analytic propositions is redundant because what remains unjustified by the subject’s meaning must be justified by experience. So, Kant’s propositions can be adequately classified using only Hume’s matters of fact and relations of ideas.

Yet, yielding to Kant’s analysis, the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is useful and, on top of that, ingrained in our language. Kant borrowed the terms from Aristotle. The legacy rationalist meaning should be revised, though, to achieve a coherent epistemology.

A priori knowledge hinges on its omnipresence in the phenomenal experience rather than its “mind origin.” For example, the a priori knowledge of a subjective perspective is more ubiquitous in phenomenal experience than the a posteriori taste of a sandwich. Both are matters of fact since they directly reflect phenomena. Yet, the a priori knowledge of a subjective perspective is a very early, profoundly ingrained, and constantly reinforced memory. The pervasiveness of a priori knowledge makes it deserve the predicate a priori and serve as a foundation for the principles of rational thought.

In conclusion, here are the existential-rationalist knowledge types mapped to the terms a priori and a posteriori . The added propositions serve to illustrate the knowledge types.

Ontic knowledge, being phenomenal experience: a priori.

Epistemic knowledge of phenomenally omnipresent matters of fact: a priori. For example: “Phenomenal experience is singular.”

Epistemic knowledge of phenomenally incidental matters of fact: a posteriori . For example: “The house is on fire.”

Epistemic knowledge of phenomenally omnipresent relations of ideas: a priori. For example: “The singularity of the phenomenal experience implies that the world must be understood in a causally deterministic way.”

Epistemic knowledge of phenomenally incidental relations of ideas: a posteriori. For example: “Mass curves spacetime.”

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