Jeff and Dan, We have to distinguish "a priori" in a logical sense from "innate" in a biological sense. Peirce interpreted the word 'innate' as learned from the experience of previous generations. That may be a priori for an individual, but it's a posteriori for the species.
JBD
It is worth noting that from early on (e.g., see "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man"), Peirce interprets Kant's account of our experience of space in a similar way
Yes, but he was critical about assuming synthetic a priori assumptions without any justification. Note the footnote on EP 1:14,
Kant's successors, however, have not been content with his doctrine. Nor ought they to have been... The problem is... how universal propo- sitions appearing to be synthetical can be evolved by thought alone.
In a letter to William James in 1905 (NEM 3:813-814), he wrote
our notion of time as a _single_ continuum, so that tomorrow morning is a sort of proper name (which daily changes its denotation). How fundamental Kant made this circumstance in his philosophy without the slightest attempt to analyze it! ... What more did Kant mean by calling time _Anschauung_? ... he never that I remember offers the least proof of it; and I should like to know how he supposed himself to know this.
DE
Kant's notion of a priori categories are perhaps best translated in my terms into the idea of an inborn ability of humans to generalize and learn by any means.
Yes. But in reading Kant and Peirce, it's important to remember Darwin (1859). Kant published his Critique in 1787, and Peirce wrote those criticisms in 1868 and 1905. Does Smyth say anything about these issues? John
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