Thank you for making my point: when one is outside the realm of purely empirical information, “a priori” reasoning is not only not fallacious, it’s completely normal.
***I’ll grant you it falls within the norm but that doesn’t preclude it from being fallacious. She arrived at her conclusion in a priori fashion, that it is not worth getting entangled in a foreign conflict basically because it is not worth getting entangled in a foreign conflict. No amount of reasoning, showing how unique the situation is, how important, that billions of lives were at stake when we DID decide to get involved, etc. would stave her off her pre-drawn conclusion. And now it appears to be your pre-drawn conclusion as well.
In like manner, there are a class of truths which are outside the realm of empirical or scientific reasoning,
***Her conclusion is not within that ‘class of truths’. It is simply an opinion pre-drawn. She then proceeds to fit the square facts she’ll accept into her round hole of reasoning, working backwards.
so harping on about the “a priori fallacy” when the data set includes non-empirical information
***It is a fallacy, plain and simple, because she had her opinion long before she considered the facts, and it colors the way she even considers her facts. That’s why she finds it so difficult to accept that Russia invading is an incredibly obvious violation of the Budapest Memorandum.
(such as one’s philosophical axioms, the amoral weighing of what’s in the current national interest, and so forth) is a fool’s game.
***The fool’s game is engaging in reasoning with such fools who have already made up their mind long before they ever considered facts. Their opinion is based on what they think or feel or want, not on facts. It is simply fallacious.
I'm pretty sure it's more akin to "it's not worth getting entangled in foreign conflict because America keeps cocking it up and leaving behind a bigger mess than when we first got there. See recent history over the past few decades as my evidence." How is that fallacious reasoning?