a posteriori

a posteriori

Logic

1. relating to or involving inductive reasoning from particular facts or effects to a general principle

2. derived from or requiring evidence for its validation or support; empirical; open to revision

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

a posteriori

see A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

A Posteriori

 

knowledge acquired through experience. This method of acquiring knowledge was already being examined in antiquity by Aristotle, Plato, and Boethius and in the Middle Ages by Averroës (ibn Rushd), Avicenna (ibn Sina), Albert von Bollstädt, Thomas Aquinas, and others. The analysis of cognition a posteriori occupied an important place in the system of I. Kant, who proposed that the special laws of science can be recognized only a posteriori but that the general principles of cognition are independent of any experience—that is, a priori.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.