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or presupposed, as prior to experience, in order to make experience rational or possible. A priori, that is, form these necessities of the mind or forms of thinking, which, though first revealed to us by experience, must yet have preëxisted in order to make experience possible. Coleridge.

ives at principles and definitions, or infers causes from effects. This is the reverse of a priori reasoning.

an argument from the cause to the effect; an a priori argument. Johnson.

An a priori principle.

The quality of being innate in the mind, or prior to experience; a priori reasoning.

stitution of the intellect, as opposed to acquired from experience; as, innate ideas. See A priori, Intuitive. There is an innate light in every man, discovering to him the first lines of duty in the common notions of good and evil. South. Men would not be guilty if they did not carry in their mind common notions of mo…

er. It rejects the noumena of Kant, restricting knowledge to phenomena as constituted by a priori categories.

nowledge; furnishing fundamental principles; as, the regulative principles, or principles a priori; the regulative faculty. Sir W. Hamilton.

ew subjects from certain premises given or assumed, and infer conclusions respecting them a priori.

The act or process of reasoning a priori from premises given or assumed.

In the Kantian system, of or pertaining to that which can be determined a priori in regard to the fundamental principles of all human knowledge. What is transcendental, therefore, transcends empiricism; but is does not transcend all human knowledge, or become transcendent. It simply signifies the a priori or necessary…

The transcending, or going beyond, empiricism, and ascertaining a priori the fundamental principles of human knowledge.