Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Watson, Jamie Carlin
Author's Email Address	jw05g@fsu.edu
URN	etd-08152009-223520
Title	A Priori Justification and Experience
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Department	Philosophy, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Michael Bishop Committee Chair Russell Dancy Committee Member Philip Bowers University Representative
Keywords	Geometry Experience Testimony Epistemology A Priori Justification
Date of Defense	2009-08-07
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract This dissertation is about a priori justification and its relationship to experiential evidence. I begin the fundamental assumption that a priori justification is justification that is independent of experience. It has been argued that putative examples of a priori justification are implausible because they are not, in any significant sense, independent of experience. My two central claims are that (a) a subject is plausibly justified a priori in believing a proposition only if the belief is not revisable on empirical grounds, which I will call the empirical unrevisability thesis; and (b) moderate rationalists can resist four empirical challenges considered by many to be decisive against the empirical unrevisability thesis. I begin by developing an account of experiential evidence that is neutral between rationalists and empiricists in order to make clear the distinction between a priori and a posteriori justification. I then argue that a moderate rationalist account of a priori justification is plausible only if the beliefs justified a priori are empirically unrevisable in a qualified sense. I then argue that four classical objections that putative cases of a priori justification are not independent of experience fail, namely, that they are revisable by some instances of contrary testimony, by mistakes in long proofs and memory, that a paradigm example of a priori knowledge was overturned by new evidence in physics, and that psychological data undermines the reliability of sources of a priori justification. I conclude that there is only one potentially threatening case, derived from neurological malfunction, and I leave the solution to this case to future research.
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