A priori knowledge

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  • A priori knowledge
    • Hume
      • Says we have 'relations of ideas'.
        • E.g. analytic truths, which are truths that are true by definition but tell us nothing about the world.
          • E.g. 'All bachelors are unmarried men' as the definition of a bachelor is an unmarried man.
            • I do not need to consult my sense experience to know this, even though I learnt the concepts 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' via experience, but after I have learnt these no further experience is required.
              • E.g. analytic truths, which are truths that are true by definition but tell us nothing about the world.
                • E.g. 'All bachelors are unmarried men' as the definition of a bachelor is an unmarried man.
                  • I do not need to consult my sense experience to know this, even though I learnt the concepts 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' via experience, but after I have learnt these no further experience is required.
      • Descartes
        • He says we have a priori knowledge of God, which he attempts to prove with the Trademark and Ontological argument.
          • The Trademark argument says that God is a perfect being and as nothing in the world is perfect I cannot have got the idea of God via sense experience, meaning he must have put the idea in my before birth.
            • This is a deductive argument, so if all the conditions are sound then this is a valid example of innate knowledge.
        • He also proves his own existence via a priori knowledge (the Cogito) as clear and distinct perceptions are a type of a priori knowledge.

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