Terms “prior” and “posterior” as used in epistemology to differentiate difference types of justifications, knowledge or argum
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According to early psychologist, Russel, human beings obtain knowledge by acquaintance through experience or direct casual interaction between an individual and the object that he/she perceives. The sense data that an individual acquire from the perceived object will enable them get acquainted despite the fact they cannot truly understand the object itself. In other cases, individuals get acquainted with their own sense of self and ideas. Practically, some people get acquainted only after observing an individual’s behavior. Propositional knowledge should be defined as a true belief because it enables an individual gets acquainted with the relation of correspondence that holds between facts and proposition. Justified true belief occurs only when an individual has an explicit understanding that certain proposition is correct and true in virtue of a fact. For example, a person is justified in believing that he/she is encountering pain if they are directly acquainted with this particular pain. According to acquaintance theorists, an individual can justified belief explains propositional knowledge only when one is acquainted with particular occurrence.
Traditionally, propositional knowledge justifies truth held by a justified belief. Belief is something than an individual does not know unless they consider true in their minds; and if they do not belief it, then they have no clue about it. Importantly, there exist no knowledge of false propositions thus actual believe in falsehood is a misapprehension as opposed to being knowledge. Therefore, a true belief ought to be supported by suitable justifications and there should be adequate evidence for the conviction.
The terms “prior” and “posterior” are commonly used in epistemology to differentiate difference types of justifications, knowledge or arguments. In philosophy, prior justification is not influenced by experience. A perfect example is that “All bachelors are not married.” On the other hand, posterior justification is influenced by empirical evidence or experience. For instance, “Some young children are very happy. Another distinction between the two is that posteriori justification makes reference to experience despite the fact that the underlying issue pertains how an individual understands or knows particular proposition or claim in question. In posterior justification, what grounds an individual belief is the major concern. A prior justification is sometimes used to describe an argument made by an individual without following a logical basis i.e. absence of evidence or analysis.
Despite the fact that both terms have been used to mean different things in history of philosophy, the terms have constantly labeled two distinct epistemological notions. Therefore, prior and posteriori knowledge have intuitive difference which philosophers have demonstrated it explicitly using examples. For instance, the proposition expressed by the sentence, “John David ruled from 1980 to 1996.” This is something that an individual ought to know a posteriori since it is an expression of an empirical fact that is not known by reason alone. By contrast, priori justification occurs when there is an expressed sentiment that an individual cannot derive other than by reason alone. For instance, “If John David ruled at all, then he ruled for finite period of time.”
In epistemology, problem of introduction has proved to be an enduring one. Numerous philosophers have grappled with the serious problem after it was raised by David Hume in the 18th century, and this has led to some ingenuous trials to solve it. The problem of introduction in respect to posteriori justification can be summarized as follows: Suppose that an individual observe great number of things (objects) with feature A, but later noted that all of the objects also possess feature B. Naturally, that individual would conclude that, in all probability, all objects that posses feature A also have characteristic B, including any object with that have not been observed but are suspected to be possessing feature A. Hume asked “What is the rational justification is there for making this inference?”. Basically, the question that has proved problematic to many is what reasons to the individuals have to believe that their conclusions about the observation may go beyond the observed instances to include unobserved instances. Another problem associated with introduction in reference to posteriori justification is that there are no clear reasons that an individual have to think that can enable him/her draw reliable conclusions about unobserved instances using what happen in the past.
Ideally, there is a real difference between mind and body basing on the properties of the two parts. It is impossible for an individual to tell the difference between two things that are similar an identical. According to Descartes, an individual is similar with their body i.e. the body and a person are exactly the same thing. He suggested that whatever is true of the person is true of the body. Human beings can feign that their bodies are not in existence but they cannot feign that their minds do not exist. Descartes purported that human bodies can be divided but human mind cannot be divided. The argument from extension rests on the concept that human body has spatial location whereas the mind does not have. Dualism concept infers that mind and body are discernable, and there is clear distinction between the two. Basing on prior and posterior justification, the common question that has been raised about concept of dualism is that if human mind and body are distinct, then there could be no profound effect on human mind when an individual incurs certain physical issues arises with human brain.
