(January 23, 2012 at 12:39 am)Perhaps Wrote: A priori knowledge has no truth value past the person who believes them to be either true or false.
I could say that applesauce is mushroom and claim a priori reasoning. That doesn't mean it's true.
To say logic produces truth, or specifically that the law of noncontradiction is true, is simply to state a belief (most likely based on utility).
To make a claim of absolute truth is to assert human arrogance.
I have to disagree here. I suspect this is somewhat similar to the discussion on intuition we had earlier. While I can declare some things to be true a-priori, such as in mathematics, there are a category of apriori knowledge without which no knowledge would be possible.
I think that if there could be any absolute truths, those would be the knowledge of the apriori facts. I don't think that there can be any statement concerning knowledge that can be made without accepting these axioms as true and therefore, any knowledge that denies these axioms would be self-refuting.
For example, the law of non-contradiction is not merely a belief. It is identification of the way this universe works and without such an identification no knowledge or beliefs can be held.
