Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun . A principle assumed as if known a priori: used in a depreciatory sense.
  • noun . A priori reasoning, as characteristic of a phase of thought or of a thinker.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An a priori principle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy The idea that some knowledge of the physical world can be derived logically from general principles.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

a priori +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • It will help to make intelligible the subtle and variable theories which follow, if it be premised that the Scholastics are apt to puzzle readers by mixing up with their philosophy of reason a real or apparent apriorism, which is called Augustinianism, Platonism, or

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913

  • Without mentioning Russell or Helmholtz, Reichenbach takes general relativity to have refuted both Poincaré's geometrical conventionalism and Kant's geometrical apriorism.

    Hans Reichenbach Glymour, Clark 2008

  • The fact that man does not have the creative power to imagine categories at variance with the fundamental logical relations and with the principles of causality and teleology enjoins upon us what may be called methodological apriorism.

    Confirmation Bias and ID 2006

  • For example, Misesian apriorism can be presented in a common-sensical fashion (we need eyeglasses to read) or it could be presented in a philosophical manner (Duhem-Quinne type critique of naive positivism).

    The Austrian Economists: 2007

  • Posterior Analytics II. 19 is difficult to interpret, and recent philosophers have often found it unsatisfying since (as often construed) it appears to commit Aristotle to a form of apriorism or rationalism both indefensible in itself and not consonant with his own insistence on the indispensability of empirical inquiry in natural science.

    Aristotle's Logic Smith, Robin 2007

  • Herder identifies this sort of misguided apriorism in the definition of genres in many areas of interpretation.

    Johann Gottfried von Herder Forster, Michael 2007

  • However, important apriorism and market process analysis are and I believe we cannot do sound economics without either the critical issue is that to be relevant to the conversation today --- in both the academic world and the way academic arguments are filtering into public policy discussions --- they must be conversant in these different developments in theory and empirical economics.

    The Changing Nature of Economics - The Austrian Economists 2006

  • However, important apriorism and market process analysis are and I believe we cannot do sound economics without either the critical issue is that to be relevant to the conversation today --- in both the academic world and the way academic arguments are filtering into public policy discussions --- they must be conversant in these different developments in theory and empirical economics.

    The Austrian Economists: 2006

  • However much we are forced to recognize that reformism sometimes manifests itself as a sane rebellion against the apriorism of orthodox Marxist dogma, and as a scientific reaction against the phraseology of pseudorevolutionary stump-orators, it is nevertheless incontestable that reformism has a logical and causal connection with the insipid and blasé sociolism and with the decadent tendencies which are so plainly manifest in a large section of the modern bourgeois literary world.

    Political Parties; a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy 1916

  • The historical school mistaking what men have done for what men should do and, while often missing the full induction of the past, scornfully rejecting as empty apriorism deductive reasoning from the nature of man, presents a materialistic, evolutionary, and positivistic view of human society, which in no way appeals to sane reason.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 14: Simony-Tournon 1840-1916 1913

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