Assess the importance of a priori knowledge?


A priori knowledge is best defined as a proposition that is known without reference to experience. Mathematical truths, innate ideas and god are examples of a priori knowledge. Each of these examples is elaborated through the famous rationalist philosophers, Plato, Chomsky and Descartes.

        Plato states that mathematical truths are innate. They are concepts that we are born with. Plato illustrates this through the use of a slave body. A slave boy that has no education is asked simple mathematical questions, by Plato. These questions were, for example, if you increase the size of one side, what will happen to the shape. After a series of questions, Plato came to notice that the slave boy answered all the questions correctly, which lead him to his hypothesis that mathematical truths are innate.

Join now!

        Chomsky argued that language structures we have are innate. For example, Dutch, one of the hardest languages to learn, is known without any experience. Small children are able to grammatically construct sentences that make sense.

        We can see in Descartes third wave of doubt that god is a concept that we are born with. Everything that we experience is false, as we are being deceived by a malicious demon.

        A priori knowledge and innate ideas are two out of three viewpoints of rationalism. The final viewpoint of rationalism is logical necessity. This is when the relationship in a sentence must ...

This is a preview of the whole essay