The primary aim of this paper is to provide the exact diagnosis of the contingent a priori debate so far by untangling complicated issues surrounding it, such as singular thought, linguistic stipulation, and epistemic justification. I will first maintain that most philosophers' arguments for or against the contingent a priori are ultimately based on one of two conflicting intuitions about linguistic stipulation: sceptics of the contingent a priori have appealed to the intuition that extra-linguistic knowledge cannot be acquired through the stroke of a pen, whereas proponents of it have appealed to the other intuition that one is in a position to understand a name that one introduces by oneself into one's own language. Then I will reconstruct the sceptics' and proponents' positions in their strongest form respectively and examine where they disagree, and finally I will argue that the contingent a priori debate cannot help but end in a stalemate without further scrutiny into singular thought. From this diagnosis, I conclude that in order to appropriately judge whether a contingent proposition is knowable a priori, we must first independently investigate what the conditions for singular thought are: the contingent a priori rides on the singular thought debate.

中文翻译：

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偶然的先验、语言规定和单一思想

本文的主要目的是通过解开围绕它的复杂问题，例如单一思想、语言规定和认识论正当性，对迄今为止的先验辩论提供准确的诊断。我首先要坚持认为，大多数哲学家支持或反对先验条件的论点最终都基于关于语言规定的两种相互冲突的直觉之一：先验条件的怀疑论者已经诉诸直觉，即无法通过笔触获得超语言知识，而它的支持者诉诸另一种直觉，即一个人能够理解一个人自己引入到自己语言中的名字。然后，我将分别以最强烈的形式重构怀疑论者和支持者的立场，并考察他们的分歧之处，最后我将论证，先验的或然辩论不得不以僵局告终，而无需进一步审视单一思想。从这个诊断中，我得出结论，为了适当地判断一个或然命题是否是先验可知的，我们必须首先独立地研究奇异思想的条件是什么：偶然的先验依赖于单一的思想辩论。