2 July 2008 - nothing empirical

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Death, Taxes, and the Synthetic A Priori

“Nothing empirical is certain” is empirical, so it may be wrong. It is deduced from a model of using evidence, but the model itself is empirical. Thus some purely empirical statement may be provable—if so, what is it? The trendy answer would be “nothing empirical is certain,” but it’s probably more like “past performance guarantees future sequels.”

clue:

The term “synthetic a priori” is by Immanuel Kant. It means about the same as “empirical and certain,” though the way he put it was quite different.

take oh take this clue away

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