I’m trying to get through an introduction to Kants critique of pure reason. Is there a helpful mnemonic or trick to keeping the two straight?
I know A priori is reasoning through deduction, and that a posteriori is reasoning through experience or observations. But I have to keep looking it up to keep it straight when I read it.
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“A priori” is Latin for “from the earlier”. You can remember this because “prior” means coming from before in time.
“A posteriori” is Latin for “from the later”. You can remember this because often adding “post-” whatever means it is after that thing. Postmodernism, postmortem (after death, “mortem” being Latin for death), postgame, etc.
Once you link the words to the vocabulary you should already know it becomes a lot easier. If you are reasoning it out before you see it you are doing it a priori. If you are figuring it out after seeing it you are doing it a posteriori.
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