Kant's Analytic and Synthetic Judgments Explained

Analytic and Synthetic Judgments

Analytic Judgments

A trial is analytic if the predicate is understood by the subject and therefore analyzes the subject enough to realize that the predication is necessary. These judgments do not give us any new information.

Synthetic Judgments

A trial is synthetic if the predicate is not contained in the notion or concept of the subject. These judgments, if they provide information, expand our knowledge.

Classification Based on Content

The above classification is made in response to the test of whether the predicate is included or not in the notion of the subject.

Classification Based on Justification

The classification to which we now turn is made on the basis of other criteria: the way it is possible to know the truth of any trial.

• Judgments a priori: Those whose truth can be known independently of experience, since its foundation is not in experience. A priori judgments are universal and necessary.
• Subsequent (a posteriori) trials: Those whose truth is known from experience. Subsequent judgments are not universal or necessary.

Understanding Necessity

To understand this, we must grasp two things:

1. What it means for a trial to be strictly universal, excluding all possible exceptions.
2. That Kant accepts Hume's claim that experience cannot show any necessary connection; experience just shows that things go well so far, but that fact does not necessarily have to happen that way.

Critique of Pure Reason

We see three parts:

Transcendental Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic

These three parts correspond to the three faculties that Kant distinguishes in man:

• Sensitivity
• Understanding
• Reason

Faculties and Knowledge Types

There are only two faculties of knowledge, which are sensitivity and understanding. However, within these, Kant distinguishes two types of intellectual attitudes that man adopts: man makes judgments about judgments but also links to other reasonable means. Besides these three parts, they also correspond to the three types of knowledge whose fundamental interest Kant studies: mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and metaphysical knowledge.

Plan of the Three Parts

The plan of these three parties is as follows:

1. Transcendental Aesthetic: Kant studies the sensible conditions of knowledge, as well as showing which are the conditions that may exist for synthetic a priori judgments in mathematics.
2. Transcendental Analytic: Understanding studies, while showing what are the conditions that enable synthetic a priori judgments in physics.
3. Transcendental Dialectic: Reason studying, while dealing with the problem of the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics—that is, whether the metaphysical satisfies the conditions that make possible the formulation of synthetic a priori judgments.