Imagination, meaning and the phenomenological material a priori

José Ruiz Fernández

pp. 613-627

in: Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 14 (3), 2015.

Abstract

The main general goal of this paper is to consider in a new light what is usually referred in the phenomenological tradition as "material a priori". Through a consideration of the evidence we have of anything colored being extended, the paper attempts to show that this evidence is of a different kind from the one we have of other propositions also involving necessity. The main peculiarity of this evidence is found in its dependence on linguistic meaning therein involved being rooted in a factual world and on an imaginative process deployed on the background of that rooting.