Card 2.2.2 · Root II — Epistemology
Reason and Intuition
How, if at all, do you know that a surface cannot be wholly red and wholly green at the same time and in the same respect?
This node asks whether anything can be known independently of experience — not merely before it — and what such knowledge would rest on.
Where it sits
Under 2.2 Sources of knowledge. Borders 6.9 Philosophy of mathematics, 1.6 Modality.
The rival answers
| Position | What a priori knowledge is |
|---|---|
| Rationalism | Reason grasps some truths by intuition and deduction, independently of experience |
| Innatism | Some a priori knowledge is part of our nature, triggered but not supplied by experience — a rationalist account of its source |
| Conceptual analysis | Unpacking what our concepts already contain |
| Conventionalism | A record of linguistic rules, not discovery about the world |
| Empiricism (Millian) | There is no a priori; such truths are very well confirmed generalisations |
| Kantian | Synthetic a priori; substantive, and grounded in the structure of experience |
Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plato | 428–348 BCE | Greek | Recollection; the slave boy in the Meno |
| René Descartes | 1596–1650 | European modern | Clear and distinct perception as a criterion |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724–1804 | European modern | The synthetic a priori |
| J. S. Mill | 1806–1873 | European modern | Arithmetic and geometry ultimately grounded in experience |
| W. V. O. Quine | 1908–2000 | Analytic | In "Two Dogmas" (1951), denied a sharp analytic/synthetic boundary; no statement immune to revision, logic included |
| Ibn Tufayl | c. 1110–1185 | Islamic | Hayy ibn Yaqzan: reason unaided reaches the truths revelation teaches |
| Zera Yacob | 1599–1692 (per Ḥatäta) | African | Attributed author (Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob): the Ḥatäta attributed to Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob tests inherited beliefs by unaided reason; both the authorship of the work and the historicity of its autobiographical protagonist remain disputed, and the dates are the text's own |
Connections
→ 2.2 · ↔ 6.9, 1.6, 2.3.1, 3.1.3 · ◇ rationalism, innatism, conceptual analysis, conventionalism, empiricism (Millian), Kantian synthesis · ○ Axial Age; Early modern; Modern; Table 3
→ narrower questions · ↔ questions it borders · ◇ the positions, mapped in Part III of the book · ○ the eras and comparison tables (Parts IV and V)
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 95.
On Coordinates of Thought
Conversations about this question in Reason & experience:
- Locke was right that the mind starts without ideas, and the argument from the newborn’s hunger fails 6 replies
- The self-defeat charge against the Cārvākas attacks a position they probably did not hold 6 replies
- Kant was wrong: we can know things as they are in themselves 5 replies
- Wang Yangming stared at bamboo for seven days and fell ill. Was he refuting empiricism? 5 replies
- The Cartesian circle: can clear and distinct perception vouch for itself? 5 replies