The Human a Priori: Essays on How We Make Sense in Philosophy, Ethics, and Mathematics

The Human A Priori is a collection of essays by A.W. Moore, one of them previously unpublished and the rest all revised. These essays are all concerned, more or less directly, with something ineliminably anthropocentric in our systematic pursuit of a priori sense-making. Part I deals with the nature, scope, and limits of a priori sense-making in general. Parts II, III, and IV deal with what are often thought to be the three great exemplars of the systematic pursuit of such sense-making: philosophy in the case of Part II, ethics in the case of Part III, and mathematics in the case of Part IV. Much of the attention throughout is devoted to the work of other philosophers: Kant and Wittgenstein feature prominently, and five of the essays take the form of reviews or critical notices of recent work in philosophy. But the interest in never purely exegetical. One of the lessons that emerges from the essays, either in opposition to the views of these other philosophers or by invocation of their views, is that we humans achieve nothing of real significance in philosophy, ethics, or mathematics except from a human point of view, and hence that all three of these pursuits can be said to betoken what may reasonably be called 'the human a priori'.

Author: A. W. Moore
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 11/08/2023
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.40w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9780192871411

About the Author
A. W. Moore, Tutorial Fellow at St Hugh's College Oxford and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford

A.W. Moore is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at St Hugh's College, Oxford. He has held teaching and research positions at University College, Oxford, and King's College, Cambridge. He is joint editor, with Lucy O'Brien, of the journal Mind. In 2016 he wrote and presented the series A History of the Infinite on BBC Radio 4.