English

Intrinsic, extrinsic, and the constitutive a priori

History and Philosophy of Physics 2019-09-04 v1

Abstract

On the basis of what I call physico-formalist philosophy of mathematics, I will develop an amended account of the Kantian--Reichenbachian conception of constitutive a priori. It will be shown that the features (attributes, qualities, properties) attributed to a real object are not possessed by the object as a "thing-in-itself"; they require a physical theory by means of which these features are constituted. It will be seen that the existence of such a physical theory implies that a physical object can possess a property only if other contingently existing physical objects exist; therefore, the intrinsic--extrinsic distinction is flawed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.08815,
  title  = {Intrinsic, extrinsic, and the constitutive a priori},
  author = {Laszlo E. Szabo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.08815},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

14 pages, 1 figure