Construct · 3 fields · 4 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningposteriorcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to prior is posterior.
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In Bayesian statistics the prior is the probability distribution an analyst assigns to an unknown quantity before seeing the current data, expressing what is assumed about that quantity in advance. Bayes set out the mechanism in his 1763 essay, and modern practice, as in Gelman and colleagues' Bayesian Data Analysis, combines the prior with the likelihood of the observed data to produce a posterior distribution by Bayes's rule. The referent is a state of belief about a parameter, and the unit is a probability distribution over its possible values. What marks this meaning is that the prior is provisional and gets updated: it is a starting point for inference, chosen by the analyst rather than read off the world, and it is meant to be revised once evidence arrives.[1][2]
In patent law the prior art is the body of everything already publicly known or available before a patent application's effective filing date, against which a claimed invention is tested for novelty and non-obviousness. In United States law, 35 U.S.C. § 102 defines the categories of prior art, such as an earlier patent, a printed publication, a public use, or a sale, that can bar a patent. The referent is the public record of earlier disclosures, and the unit is the set of qualifying references. What differs here is that prior means chronologically earlier and publicly accessible: it is not a belief and not a person's history, but a collective account of what the world had already disclosed, used to decide whether an invention is genuinely new.[3]
In philosophy a priori knowledge is knowledge whose justification does not depend on experience, in contrast with a posteriori knowledge, which is justified by observation. Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, made the distinction central: a priori judgements are known independently of any particular experience and, for Kant, can be both necessary and universal. The referent is the ground of a piece of knowledge, and the 'unit' is a judgement classified by how it is justified. What sets this meaning apart is that prior is not temporal at all: 'a priori' means logically or epistemically prior to experience, a matter of justification rather than of chronology, belief, or record.[4]
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