Understanding Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments: A Priori Knowledge
Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments: A Priori Knowledge
Analytic judgments a priori are statements considered analytical (not adding new knowledge) when the predicate expresses something already implicitly included in the concept of the subject, within its definition. For example, the concept of a stone includes the idea of “occupying space,” i.e., “possessing a certain extent.” A stone that does not occupy space would be nothing; it would be absurd to say that unextended stones exist. An indirect proof that a statement is analytic is to deny the predicate and observe that it leads to a contradiction. “The stone is unextended” or “the stone does not occupy any place” are absurd statements with the same meaning. It is necessary that the stone occupies space, because the opposite is impossible. No experiments or travel to remote locations are needed to know that “stones that do not occupy any place” do not exist. Before experience, we can know if an analytical view is true or false.
Analytic judgments are void; they do not teach anything new, nothing that we did not know in advance. The structure of an analytic a priori view is “A = A”, as the subject and predicate are occupied by the same concept. Without experience, a priori, we know that “a woman is a woman,” “a man is a man,” “wood is wood,” and “triangles have 3 sides.”
Synthetic Judgments A Posteriori
In synthetic judgments a posteriori, such as “the stone is heavy” or “the stone has weight,” the property expressed through the predicate is “synthesized” with the subject; it is “new” and was not contained in advance, a priori. It takes experience to “assign” the property of heaviness to the stone. In addition, the opposite is possible. Experience teaches that stones weigh when acted upon by the force of gravity, but outside a gravitational field, stones no longer possess the property of heaviness.
Synthetic judgments teach new and interesting properties of things through experience; therefore, they are a posteriori. Experience allows us to identify new properties of objects. For example, if we want to know whether a particular rock or mineral has healing properties or can be harmful to health, this cannot be known a priori, but only through experience. Only through synthetic judgments a posteriori do we learn new things, but all are subject to review and may be proven otherwise; they are contingent and not necessary. A mineral considered poisonous at certain doses may be medicine at others.
Synthetic Judgments A Priori
Synthetic judgments a priori address the central question of philosophy, according to Kant: “What can I know?” We must respond, in principle, that human beings are capable of analytic truths a priori, necessary truths but empty, and synthetic truths a posteriori, i.e., truths that expand our knowledge but are always subject to revision. If there were no more true than these, what you stand for empiricists like Hume, epistemological skepticism would be guaranteed and substantiated.
Kant claims that there is a kind of knowledge intermediate between these 2 that retains the “advantages” of them not including any of its “inconvenient” truths We would have expanded our knowledge on the one hand, they were not empty, and also do so permanently. What we would like is to have a priori synthetic judgments.