Thoughts on this review of ITOE?

[Proverb]

Please take 3 mins to read the following review of ITOE.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-...=283155&s=books

Will someone clarify the meaning of 'a priori' and 'postpriori' for me so I can better understand any meaning that this review might have.

[Hal]

http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/apriori.htm

[Hal]

Which review do you mean out of interest? The first one by D Stephen Heersink (which seems like contentless gibberings), or the later one by Lee Carlson?

Edited July 20, 2005 by Hal

[Proverb]

The first review.

Thank you for the link.

[ex_banana-eater]

Ayn Rand rejected the a priori. The reviewer is a liar.

[softwareNerd]

For an earlier discussion of 'a priori' see this previous thread.

Edited December 16, 2005 by Felipe

[DavidOdden]

Ayn Rand rejected the a priori. The reviewer is a liar.

Or an ignoramus. Or both.

[norwegian_Objectivist]

This review contains so many errors, so the reviewer is either dumb or a liar.

First he attacks Aquinas for not using induction, however, the method of induction started with Francis Bacon (end of the 16th century I believe), and no author had used much induction before Bacon. But both Aristotle and Aquinas developed deduction. And induction and deduction are not in conflict.

But then he start talking about David Hume, however Hume "proved" that induction is Impossible, because he believed that one couldn't know anything about the universe, and therefore one couldn't understand causes either. All he believed in was a weird sort of deduction.

Following with his view on Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand rejected a priori knowledge; a priori meaning knowledge without experience. Instincts is a kind of a priori knowledge, But Ayn Rand said that man was born tabula rasa; with no knowledge.

Fortunately, not all reviews contain has many lies as this one.

[Proverb]

Ayn Rand rejected the a priori. The reviewer is a liar.

How did Rand reject a priori knowledge? Isn't "A is A" argued by Rand to be a priori?

[Hal]

How did Rand reject a priori knowledge?  Isn't "A is A" argued by Rand to be a priori?

If the a priori/a posteriori distinction is valid, then "A is A" (along with 'existence exists' and 'everything has identity') would be paradigm cases of a priori truths. But the Objectivist position is that the distinction is not valid. But the Objectivist position is that the distinction itself is invalid. Peikoff argues against it in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy" in IOE, and while I personally find his arguments quite weak, I think there are other good reasons to reject it.

[AisA]

How did Rand reject a priori knowledge?  Isn't "A is A" argued by Rand to be a priori?

No. As Peikoff explains in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy" in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p 151:

"Man's knowledge is not acquired by logic apart from experience or by experience apart from logic, but by the application of logic to experience."

In formulating the statement, "A is A", Aristotle identified the most basic rule of logic that applies to all of one's experiences: that since the things you perceive are what they are and not something else -- a rock cannot be a rock and a cloud at the same time; a thing cannot be all white and all black simultaneously -- then contradictions cannot exist.

Aristotle thus has shown the method we must follow to gain knowledge from experience: we must identify the facts we observe in a non-contradictory manner, i.e. by using logic, integrating any new knowledge with all previous knowledge, and rejecting as false any alleged fact that contradicts what is known to be true.

This is why Objectivism rejects the a priori/postpriori, or experience versus logic, dichotomy: because both are indispensable to human cognition.

Logic applied to anything other than experience becomes a parlor game of symbol manipulation divorced from the task of gaining knowledge.

A consciousness that experiences the world without the guide of logic has no means of identifying truth from falsehood, i.e. no means of gaining knowledge.

The notion that you must choose between logic and experience is utterly false. You must choose both if knowledge is your goal.