According to the Oxford English Dictonary George Berkeley introduced the term a priori into English. His inspiration for this was, it seems, to be found partly in the writings of his immediate predecessors, particularly Pierre Bayle, and partly in his pedagogical work where he adjudicated disputations between his pupils. Some of his arguments against the existence of matter Berkeley tells us are a priori, others a posteriori. Even the a priori arguments are underpinned by prior semantic principles of an anti-abstractionist character, which are shown to be important particularly in the immaterialist philosophy of mathematics. Berkeley's courageously unorthodox, and generally unpublished, thoughts about mathematics thus grow from the same soil as his celebrated denial of matter., Marek Tomeček., and Obsahuje poznámky a bibliografii
Austin and Quine both reacted to the logical positivism of Carnap, but they did it from different positions. While Quine with his pragmatic rejection of the analytic – synthetic divide and confirmation holism represents a modification and continuation of the tradition, Austin challenges its underlying assumptions: the prominent role of mathematics as a model for natural language and the dichotomy physical object – sense datum. His criticism is paralleled here by the later Wittgenstein in On Certainty and Philosophical Investigations, reacting to his earlier logical phase. But there seems to be no room left for the traditional questions of the philosophy of mathematics in Austin's natural language approach. and Austin a Quine reagovali na Carnapův logický pozitivismus, ovšem z rozdílných pozic. Zatímco Quine z pragmatických pozic odmítá rozdělení na analytické a syntetické věty, svým konfirmačním holismem pokračuje v tradici logického pozitivismu, Austin odmítá už samotné jeho předpoklady: paradigmatickou roli matematiky pro přirozený jazyk a dichotomii fyzický předmět – smyslové datum. Svojí kritikou zrcadlí Wittgensteinovu pozdní fázi v O jistotě a Filozofických zkoumáních, kteréžto knihy reagují na ranou logizující fázi Traktátu. Ovšem Austinův radikální postoj, zdá se, neumožňuje tematizování tradičních otázek filozofie matematiky.
The study of foraging behaviour of 20 forest bird species was conducted during two different phenophases of a vegetation period in the West Carpathians oak-dominated natural forests. Using a standard and a modified a priori approaches, seven foraging guilds were distinguished, whereas only five significantly different guilds were clustered by a a posteriori approach. Four common guilds for all three approaches were quantitatively compared. The methods differed especially in the classification of foraging generalists. Differences in guild densities between a priori and a posteriori approaches emerged in both, the pre-foliage and the foliage periods, chiefly in the guilds of insectivores on ground surface (47.3–89.6%) and insectivores on buds/leaves and twigs (15.0–45.9%). The modified a priori method provided moderate densities of separate guilds. The modified a priori method with more detailed density calculation is recommended for the quantitative guild structure comparisons of different bird assemblages. The method takes into consideration proportional use of foraging substrates in combination with food type.