Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies (Dec 2024)
Parrini on the a priori in Logical Empiricism
Abstract
Logical empiricism defined itself, in part, by rejecting Kant’s claims of knowledge, particularly his notion of a priori. Non-Euclidean geometries and related general relativity question the Euclidean ground of the notion, empirical evidence replaces any a priori grounding, and logical-mathematical truths signify tautologies incompatible with any a priori synthesis (Russell 1897; Wittgenstein 1922). Ultimately, scientific philosophy allows no room for the psychologistic mind-dependency. Kant’s entire cognitive framework became untenable. Nevertheless, evaluating the notion of a priori in logical empiricism remains problematic. For Kant, a priori means ‘necessary and unrevisable’ but also ‘constitutive and contingent’ (Friedman 1999, 2007; Parrini 1998; De Boer 2010). A close analysis shows that neo-positivists transform rather than abandon Kant’s notion by developing various proposals without consistency. Parrini (2002) groups this variety of readings into two types: a weak and a strong rejection of the Kantian a priori. He argues that only the weak rejection accurately describes the evolution of the a priori in logical empiricism. This paper aims to support Parrini’s classification. Part I outlines Parrini’s neo-positivist account of scientific knowledge. Part II analyzes the a priori in Kant’s theory of judgments, discussing empirical a priori propositions (Kant 1787; Harper 1989) as well as the material a priori (Husserl 1900/1901, Schlick 1930, Simons 1992, Silva 2017). Part III criticizes Einstein’s objections to Kantian intuition, significantly influencing Schlick’s a priori conventionalism (Einstein 1919). Part IV assesses the critique of the a priori advocated by metric geometry and Russell, which define the epistemic background of the neo-positivists. Parts V through VII examine the developments of the a priori in logical empiricism, including the relativized a priori (Friedman 2001, 2009), implicit definition (Hilbert 1902; Schlick 1918), and coordinative principles (Reichenbach 1920; De Boer 2010). Final remarks compare these developments with Carnap’s a priori L-rules (1928).
