A priori, Analytic, Necessary - Epistemology Video 15 

I appreciate the time you've put into these-- I'm a doctoral student in philosophy, and these have helped a lot

wonderful thank you

I’m really enjoying your course, thank you very much! I would only like to say that I’m not very convinced by the distinction between a priori/necessary or a posteriori/contingent. One of the examples seems to say that water is necessarily h2o but in another sense water could not even exist if the universe had other parameters. (In that case, other things would exist and possibly other beings to know their chemical formulas, or maybe not :) ) This empirical definition seems to be necessary but given that it talks about the world I would say it is still contingent. I would like to learn more about this, but I didn't get the name of the author, could you please suggest some references for reading?

Nice work

You're the goat

TY!

I am wondering how it could be contingent that I exist but necessary that I came from my exact parents. Seem to be of the same cause and effect

'shortest line BETWEEN 2 points' 'straight line BETWEEN 2 points' it's analytical. you can't just take the meaning of 'straight', 'shortest', 'line', and 'point'. you need to analyze it as a whole. in which case 'between' is what gives the whole a concrete meaning.

this whole notion of a priori knowledge just strikes me as nonsensical. even in the case of arithmetic/mathmatics i would have to have previous experience learning the meaning of the numerals and operators and the rules of operation.