Meaning and Necessity

Can you always know what something is just by thinking about it?

Imagine you're looking at a box and you think, "This box is a box." But then you open it and find it's actually a toy car. Your thought didn't match reality.

You thought you knew the box was a box just by thinking, but it turned out to be something else. This shows the difference between knowing something just by thinking (a priori) and knowing something by seeing it (a posteriori).

Example

You thought the box was a box (a priori), but when you opened it, you saw it was a toy car (a posteriori).

Remember this

The difference between knowing something just by thinking (a priori) and knowing something by seeing it (a posteriori) is crucial in understanding knowledge.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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