A priori knowledge is knowledge that does not require sense experience to be known or true, i.e. if you know what the proposition means, you don't need to check experience to know whether it's true. A common example of an a priori proposition is 'all bachelors are unmarried men', in knowing the meaning of the word 'bachelor' (an unmarried man), we can know that the proposition is true, without having to confirm so through subjective experience. Another example is 'all squares have four sides' - again, we know that by definition the term 'square' is a four-sided shape, confirming that the proposition must be true. Furthermore, empiricists believe that all a priori knowledge is analytic (true or false just in the virtue of the meaning of the words).
To contrast, a posteriori knowledge is knowledge that can only be established through sense experience, for example, 'snow is white' - we only know that this proposition is true because of our sense experiences of snow. Empiricists believe that all a posteriori knowledge is synthetic (true or false because of the way the world is).
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