Mind 112 (447):502-6 (
2003)
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Abstract
Laurence BonJour divides approaches to a priori justification into three kinds.
Quine’s radical empiricism denies the existence of any special category of a priori
justification; moderate empiricism attempts to explain a priori justification
in terms of something like knowledge of meaning or grasp of concepts; and
rationalism postulates an irreducible ‘rational insight’ into the nature of reality.
The positions therefore form a familiar trio of eliminativism, reductionism
and anti-reductionism concerning a priori justification. BonJour’s interesting
and (in the present philosophical climate) unusual project is to defend rationalism,
the anti-reductionist position. Rationalism says that we have an ability
to ‘directly or intuitively see or grasp or apprehend … a necessary fact about
the nature or structure of reality’ (pp. 15-16). ‘An apparent rational insight,’ he
says, ‘purports to be nothing less than a direct insight into the necessary character
of reality’ (p. 107). Two clarifications will help to mark out the distinctive
character of this view: first, that rational insight is fallible; and second, that
although BonJour carefully distinguishes the concepts of necessity and apriority,
he none the less claims that rational insight yields a priori knowledge of
necessary truths only. On his view, the contingent a priori does not exist,
although empirical necessities do...