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Hi anyone interested in this exchange My question was for references to research - other than by Piaget - on the development of a priori knowledge [APK].? Joe: thanks - you are right in one way about clarifying what I wanted. I merely wanted some references to check out. Clarifying whether there is such a thing as APK , identifying its origin [if there is something there] and its constitution too is "a bit tricky" [as my grandson aged 5 likes to say]. On this, see 1. 1. My question is due to the fact that I?have a paper in press on Plato, Kant and Piaget on APK: Smith, L. (2010). Knowledge A Priori - from Plato and Kant to Piaget. Festschrift für Horst Pfeiffle [pp. 128-140]. Vienna: Löcker Verlag I am planning a follow-up on what happened in the rest of the 20th century, i.e. after 1925 when Piaget criticised Kant. Piaget's work has been challenged in all sorts of ways, but on this there has been a virtual silence. I start from Kant because Piaget challenged Kant. 2. For Kant, APK is knowledge independent of experience which has twin properties in being both universal and necessary. Taking one of his examples 7 + 5 = 12 then this is APK only if the knower understands that it is always true and necessarily true in that its truth could not be otherwise. Note well under Kant's account: a: giving the right response to the question "What is 7 + 5?" is not APK b: knowing that it is true is not APK c: innate knowledge is not APK for Kant [see my 2009 paper note 3] Smith, L. (2009). Piaget's developmental epistemology. In U. Müller, J. Carpendale, & L. Smith (eds.). Cambridge companion to Piaget. [pp. 64-93]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. d: innate knowledge is not APK for Piaget [see Piaget's critique of Lorenz in Biology and Knowledge (1971, sect 20-3)] e: knowledge due to experience is not APK: thus no knowledge due to Vygotsky's ZPD, or to Fischer's training, or even to personal learning is APK. That is because any such knowledge is dependent on experience, and so not independent of experience. At this point reflect on the question I have noted several times: is there any such thing as APK? 3. You could modify Kant's criteria - see my original email for 21st century work. But a tenable rationale is necessary; postulating putative cases of APK is not to give a tenable rationale. Joe: empiricism and Carnap. OK - there is an alternative there all right. But Carnap's view is not Kant's, nor Piaget's. Further, I know of no research that uses C's account to investigate the development of APK. By the way: a focus on APK is not the same as a focus on understanding analyticity. 4. Whilst the exchange has identified many surrounding issues, only one reference has been given - to Herrnstein & Loveland's pigeons Michael: thanks for the reference but this won't work: f: H&L decline to discuss APK at all. Their own interpretation is some version of nativism or empiricism, and so falls foul of 2a-e g: it may be that the pigeons [whose early background was uncontrolled in their study] had a discrimination capacity -but is that knowledge? h: even if it is knowledge, it is knowing how. But knowing how to do something is not the same as knowing that something is true, always true, and necessarily true - and all that independently of experience. Otherwise, mature infants prior to language could?stake out a case for being Nobel Prize winners. 6: Natural kinds Edith: thanks for this, and it is an intriguing example. But it is incompatible with 2a-e. If "horse" means "that is a horse" and "I know that is a horse" - some big "ifs" here - then anything anyone says is APK.?A reductio surely. 7. Commonalities animal/infants Stephan yes, and bon voyage. Really, though, a question arising from epistemology, such as APK, may not "fit" the scientific categories used to drive empirical work. It may be, and often is the case, that science has to leave some questions unanswered, temporarily or even longer. I reckon APK is one such issue. Or to put this another way: the nativist and empiricist categories used to drive much empirical work will not be sensitive enough for automatic use with all issue; of which APK is one. You could say: so much the worse for APK. Or you could say: so much the worse for those categories. [At this point, the jury is leaving the court room?] Back to my main question - references to work I have missed on APK. The conclusion I am drawing is that there is none. Actually, that was my own view, but I want to check. Many thanks one and all.