RE: WSA issue 1: what is a priori knowledge?

I agree. The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" bring a strong philosophical connotation, which might not be appropriate in our context (even though this might get falsified by the recent discussion on what a resource is :-)).

In particular, the primary meaning of a priori is "deductive", "relating to or derived by reasoning from self-evident propositions", which is not what we are talking about here.

Ugo

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler) 
> [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 8:21 AM
> To: Hugo Haas; [email protected]
> Subject: RE: WSA issue 1: what is a priori knowledge?
> 
> 
> 
> I think that this is an excellent analysis.  However, is it 
> too late to
> consider substituting the word "prior" for "a priori"?  I really think
> that the meaning intended by everyone concerned is really 
> more along the
> lines of "prior", and that using this word would lessen the confusion.
> The reason I think this is that the term "a priori" generally 
> indicates
> that something is known inherently or is self-evident.  I believe that
> this connotation is essentially what causes people to sit up and say,
> "Huh??" when they see its use in this context.  If we used the word
> "prior" would it not serve just as well and alleviate the 
> concern?  The
> parties who are using web services to communicate simply do 
> not have any
> inherent or self-evident knowledge of each other, IMHO.
>