Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Constitutive Rules, Normativity, and A Priori Truth. [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 07 • Author/s: Terry Godlove
Topics: History of Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

This paper develops an argument which seems to yield a set of a priori rules—rules which are constitutive of, but not normative for, thought and experience. I contrast the resulting Kantian sense of a priori truth as independent of all experience, because presupposed by it, with the use Searle makes of a priori truth by stipulation or definition. By focusing on the a priori rules of thought and experience we can make good on the sense of constitutivity that Searle had in mind in his early work. By virtue of…