A priori reasoning

A priori according to Chat GPT

In these blogs, I have often paid attention to fallacies, so false or deceptive argumentations. Fallacies are often not committed intentionally, so as a deliberate way of manipulation. On the contrary, people usually usually believe in the truth of their false reasonings. This leads often to the drama of explaining the truth: It is one thing to unmask an imposter; it is another thing to disappoint someone. Often the latter is not more than that, but in extreme cases it can also happen that disproving a false argument makes that the world of the person who believed in it collapses. Nevertheless, it is important to expose fallacies, for a world based on false truths makes no sense, even if it is the little world of one person.
It is often difficult to convince others of the falsity of their reasonings. Besides that there may be psychological barriers to accept criticism, reasonings are often complicated, even to that extent that the most-expert minds sometimes make mistakes. Initially, persons not experienced in logical reasoning can also have problems to understand them. Reasoning has to be learned. And then there may be practical reasons why false reasonings cannot be uncovered. In political discussions, for example, the time each speaker gets is often limited, and how to convince each person of the public of the debate? In practice, personal appearance, debating tricks, etc. are more important for a speaker to convince others than what the speaker is saying, even in case what the speaker says is false.
One of the most difficult false reasonings is, I think, the a priori argument; not because it is so difficult to unmask but because of the emotional consequences that this unmasking may have for the person concerned, often leading to a psychological blockade to accept the falseness of his or her argument. The a priori argument – rationalization, dogmatism or proof texting, which are all varieties of this type of reasoning – is (see link above) “a corrupt argument from logos, starting with a given, pre-set belief, dogma, doctrine, scripture verse, ‘fact’ or conclusion and then searching for any reasonable or reasonable-sounding argument to rationalize, defend or justify it.” It is a kind of reasoning much used by ideologists and fundamentalists, but, in fact, saying so would give a false picture of this fallacy, as if only some unflexible minds would use this kind of false reasoning. Actually, any argumentation from unproved suppositions belongs to this category. Such a supposition is then believed but not proved, as a kind of Archimedean point. And this is just the weak point of this kind of reasoning: Why should the argument based on the supposition be true if we don’t know that the supposition itself is true? There is nothing against reasoning from suppositions as a kind of thought experiment, but a reasoning doesn’t become true by simply supposing or believing that its suppositions and the argumentation based on it are true, while in fact there is no evidence beyond this supposing or believing. At most, we can say that the reasoning is an option, not that it is true.
The a priori fallacy is related to the fallacy “appeal to ignorance”, discussed in another blog. This is (see here, #15) “the fallacy that since we don’t know (or can never know, or cannot prove) whether a claim is true or false, it must be false, or it must be true.” But if we don’t know whether a claim is true or false, how can we know then whether it is true or false? The website just quoted mentions this example of this fallacy: “Scientists are never going to be able to positively prove their crazy theory that humans evolved from other creatures, because we weren't there to see it! So, that proves the Genesis six-day creation account is literally true as written!” No, for what we don’t know (couldn’t see, in this case) cannot prove anything. Note that this quote includes some other fallacies, namely “appeal to ridicule” and “attacking the evidence”, and a few more (see the last link above; the “appeal to ridicule” is discussed in Bad Arguments by Arp et.al.).
There are some more fallacies to which the a priori argument is related. Especially, I want to mention yet “begging the question”: A conclusion is derived from premises that presuppose the conclusion. Often, in a priori reasonings the a priori supposition is considered reasonable or true because of the argument based on it, while the argument seems reasonable because of the suppositions. Fallacies seldom come alone.