A Historical and Systematic Perspective on A Priori Knowledge and Justification

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. Part I Kant, Quine and Putnam on The A Priori

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Kant’s Views on A Priori Knowledge

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 3-34

   3. Quine’s Views on A Priori Knowledge

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 35-53

   4. Putnam’s Views on A Priori Knowledge

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 55-74

3. Part II Hale’s Views on A Priori Knowledge and Revision 

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-76

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   2. Hale’s General Epistemological Views Regarding A Priori Knowledge

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 77-81

   3. Kitcher’s Views on A Priori Knowledge

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 83-92

   4. Hale’s Reactions to Kitcher’s Views

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 93-102

   5. “Pure” Hale and Related Issues

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 103-146

   6. Critical Examination of Hale’s Views on A Priori Knowledge

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 147-172

4. Part III A Prioricity and Infallibility

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 173-173

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   2. What Is the A Priori?

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 175-186

   3. A Priori Knowledge and Infallibility

      • Ivette Fred-Rivera

      Pages 187-210

5. Back Matter

   Pages 211-230

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This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the problem of a priori knowledge from a historical as well as a systematic perspective. The author explores Kant’s views in connection with the possibility of revision, something hardly, if at all, done in philosophical literature. Furthermore, the views of well-renowned philosophers such as Quine, Putnam, Kitcher, and Hale are discussed in detail and are put into a historical and systematic perspective. Finally, this book contains a glossary of important notions offering illuminating accounts of a priori knowledge and related notions and explains the relationship between a priori knowledge, fallibility and revision. The detailing of concepts such as ‘defeasibility’, ‘infallibility’, ‘falsifiability’ helps anyone reading philosophical literature to pin down the meaning of the terms and its implications in this context. The enriched and dual approach the author takes makes the book a very useful and lucid guide to the problem of a priori knowledge.

• A priori knowledge
• Necessity and universality
• The problem of a priori knowledge
• Kant's views on a priori knowledge
• Quine's views about a priori knowledge
• revision of a priori statements
• Putnam's views on a priori knowledge
• Kitcher's views on a priori knowledge

• Department of Humanities, Faculty of General Studies, University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico

  Ivette Fred-Rivera

Ivette Fred-Rivera is a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus since 1998. She obtained her Ph. D. in Philosophy at City University of New York Graduate Center in 1997. She was active in graduate research and / or teaching at the Department of Logic and Metaphysics of The University of St. Andrews and at the Department of Philosophie, Logik und Wissenshaftstheorie of the University of Munich, from 1994-1999. Her research areas are epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic. She is editor of Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale (OUP, 2018, with Jessica Leech). She also has published works on aesthetics and art. Ivette Fred-Rivera is a world traveler and a photographer and regularly visits and lectures in important universities in Asia. 

Policies and ethics