After Kant’s defining and distinction between Pure and Empirical cognition, Kant introduces a second distinction between Analytic and Synthetic judgements. This distinction most Philosophy majors would be familiar with, and a lot of related disciplines, because it has been a very valuable distinction, popularised by Kant but the core concept can be found in David Hume’s works, which is the original driving force behind Kant’s project.
Some terms to understand first.
Judgement – A statement or truth claim.
Subject – The focus of any given judgement / the thing that the judgement is about. The sky is blue. I don’t think pain is good.
Predicate – The concept that is added / predicated to the subject. The sky is blue. I don’t think pain is good.
Analytic Judgements
Analytic judgements are ones in which the predicate does not actually add anything to the subject, but merely reveal something already contained within. Consider the statement ‘All bachelors are unmarried men’. The predicate unmarried men is completely contained within the subject bachelors because it is essentially an unpacking and reforming of the original concept. Analytic judgements are necessarily true, by definition. The predicates, as Kant says, are “thought into” the subject sometime prior. This judgement is analytic because it is entirely self contained, and requires no further evidence or proof to know that it’s a true claim, because it is merely elucidatory. It shows us only what is within the subject already.
Synthetic judgements
Synthetic judgements, are the opposite of analytic. These are judgements wherein the predicate does add something to the subject, that cannot be known if it is true without appealing to something more than just analytic reason. The sky is blue is a synthetic judgement because it cannot be known simply by analysis of the subject sky, or the predicate blue, whether or not those two concepts relate. One must appeal to experience in order to find out whether or not the claim is true.
Kant’s examples are “all bodies are extended” and “all bodies are heavy”. The concept of body is a priori, I don’t need to pull that from anywhere, I already have a complete understanding of the concept.
‘All bodies are extended’ is an analytic judgement, because the concept of a body already contains within it extension. By appealing to the law of contradiction (that something cannot be and not be at the same time, only one must be true) we can know for certain that it is a true judgement, because we cannot separate the two concepts. You cannot have a body without extension, it is necessary.
All bodies are heavy, however, is a synthetic judgement. Though we start with an analytic statement, to move forward and are adding a concept that is not inherently found in the concept, but by continuing onwards and appealing to our experience we find the concept of weight and heaviness to be related with the concept of body, and can thus on that grounds determine whether or not the judgement is true.
Place of the White Blog 