Naturalism and the a Priori

In Coming to Our Senses (1996), I argue for and apply a naturalistic semantic methodology to defend an anti-holistic truth-referential view of meaning. The naturalism in question is an epistemological doctrine that I take from Quine: there is only one way of knowing, the empirical way that is the basis of science (whatever that way may be). So I reject “a priori knowledge.” I do not give a detailed argument for my rejection but I do give two reasons (2.2): Briefly, first, with the recognition of the holistic nature of confirmation, we lack a strong motivation for thinking that mathematics and logic are immune from empirical revision; and, second, the idea of a priori knowledge is deeply obscure, as the history of failed attempts to explain it show. In this paper I will defend this view of the a priori from the criticisms of two other naturalistically inclined philosophers with whom I am usually in a great deal of agreement, Georges Rey (in this volume, 1998b; also 1993) and Hartry Field (in this volume, 1998; also 1996). Rey disagrees with me explicitly and sharply. Field does so implicitly and less sharply.1