Response to my critics: Chris Pincock, Lisa Warenski and Jonathan Weinberg

This is my response to the papers by Chris Pincock, Lisa Warenski and Jonathan Weinberg, which were presented at the Book Symposium on my Essays on A Priori Knowledge and Justification, American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meetings, March 16–19, 2014. 1 Response to Lisa Warenski Lisa’s comments address two major themes: the role of a priori argument in defenses of the a priori and the role of indefeasibility conditions in the concept of the a priori. In my book (Casullo 2003) and, to a lesser extent, in my essay ‘‘A Priori Knowledge’’ (Casullo 2012, chap. 6), I argue that a priori arguments both for and against the existence of a priori knowledge are largely inconclusive and advocate for a different approach to addressing the issue of the existence of a priori knowledge: one that appeals to empirical evidence. Deficiency arguments provide one example of a category of arguments that are alleged to support the existence of a priori knowledge that I contend fail to do so. Lisa maintains that I have underestimated the force of Bealer’s (1992) argument. She draws two general conclusions: There is no a priori reason to exclude them [deficiency arguments] when considering the relative merits of (moderate) rationalism and empiricism. If the advocate of a deficiency argument that poses a dilemma for empiricism can mount a satisfactory reply to a parallel dilemma argument, then the & Albert Casullo [email protected] 1 Department of Philosophy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0321, USA 123 Philos Stud DOI 10.1007/s11098-015-0590-2