Constitutive a priori

Abstract

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the issue of a priority. Many philosophers have proposed accounts that attempt to establish the existence of a priori propositions while avoiding the difficulties of the former accounts. One of these philosophers is Michael Friedman, who has put forward the account of constitutive a priori. Friedman aims both to characterize constitutiveness with respect to a scientific framework and thereby to complement Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, and to establish a sense of a priority that the former gives rise to and thereby to challenge Quinean epistemological holism. In my thesis, I provide a critical discussion of Friedman's own attempt to characterize constitutiveness with respect to a scientific framework. I argue that, in contrast to what Friedman claims, constitutiveness does not give rise to an epistemological difference that conflicts with Quinean epistemological holism. I rather suggest that the peculiarity of the putatively constitutive propositions can rather be accounted for by appealing to the notion of functional a priority that is proposed by Arthur Pap.