Abstract: The major divide in contemporary epistemology is between those who embrace and those who reject a priori knowledge. This book aims to provide a systematic treatment of the primary epistemological issues associated with the a priori that is sensitive to recent developments in the field of epistemology. Assessing the status of the a priori within contemporary epistemology requires distinguishing the requirements of the a priori from traditional assumptions about the nature of knowledge and justification. Freeing the a priori from those assumptions yields three major insights. First, the concept of a priori justification is minimal, it is simply the concept of nonexperiential justification. Second, the basic question that must be addressed to resolve the controversy over the existence of a priori knowledge is whether there are nonexperiential sources of justified beliefs. Third, is articulating the concept of nonexperiential justification and establishing that there are nonexperiential sources of justified belief that require empirical investigation. Hence, epistemologists must both acknowledge and embrace the role of empirical evidence in resolving these fundamental issues. The book concludes by arguing that traditional approaches to the a priori, which focus primarily on the concepts of necessary truth and analytic truth, are misguided.

Keywords: analytic, a priori, concept, empirical, evidence, justification, knowledge, necessary, nonexperiential, truth