I’ve heard this sort of phrase quite a bit lately:
“He rejected a priori the concept that anyone would find him attractive.”
Meaning that he took the fact that no one would find him attractive as a given with no need to prove or disprove it either way.
Now I remember–or think I remember–from reading Kant that a priori refers to statements that are able to be intuited from the statement alone without resorting to sensory experience or other modes of deduction, for instance “The red barn is red.”
Is this a legitimate way to use a priori, or has the term been co-opted in the same way “ironic” has come to mean “anything and everything unexpected cropping up in someone’s life?”