Abstract

Chapter Six defends Subjective Principlism against its most important challenges. It does so by considering the history of and arguments against Subjective Principlism, and then demonstrating that there is a version of Subjective Principlism that those arguments fail to impugn. The chapter starts by considering Immanuel Kant’s Subjective Principlism, according to which subjective principles are synthetic a priori. It then considers classic arguments against synthetic apriority, culminating in those of the logical empiricists, including Rudolf Carnap. Next the chapter considers Carnap’s Subjective Principlism, according to which subjective principles are analytic. Afterward it considers the most famous arguments against analyticity, viz., Willard van Orman Quine’s. After that it considers Michael Friedman’s contemporary version of Subjective Principlism, according to which subjective principles are relativized a priori. Finally the chapter shows that Friedman’s Subjective Principlism remains unimpugned by classic arguments against Kant’s and Quine’s arguments against Carnap’s version of it.