Since Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity, the view that there are contingent a priori truths has been surprisingly widespread. In this paper, I argue against that view. My first point is that in general, occurrences of predicates “a priori” and “contingent” are implicitly relativized to some circumstance, involving an agent, a time, a location. My second point is that a priority entails necessity, whenever the two are relativized to the same circumstance. In other words, what is known to be the …
Read moreSince Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity, the view that there are contingent a priori truths has been surprisingly widespread. In this paper, I argue against that view. My first point is that in general, occurrences of predicates “a priori” and “contingent” are implicitly relativized to some circumstance, involving an agent, a time, a location. My second point is that a priority entails necessity, whenever the two are relativized to the same circumstance. In other words, what is known to be the case a priori (by an agent in a circumstance) could not fail to be the case (in the same circumstance), hence is necessary.
