Luther 6
different—these are a posteriori truths. Kant then asserts that there are two kinds of a
priori truths or judgments, which he calls analytic and synthetic.
23
He defines a judgment
as the operation of thought whereby one connects a subject and predicate, where the
predicate qualifies the subject. In analytic judgments, the predicate is already contained
in the concept of the subject. Put differently, analytic judgments only make clear what is
already known in a concept as such. For instance, an analytic judgment is one like “all
bodies are extended,” whose truth is guaranteed by the meaning, and is discovered
through the analysis of the terms used to express it.
24
Although analytic judgments
clarify and analyze knowledge, they do not increase it. An analytic judgment is true only
because of the logical relation of a subject and predicate. Thus, denying an analytic
judgment would involve a logical contradiction.
A synthetic judgment differs from the analytic in that its predicate is not
contained in the subject. Hence, synthetic judgments expand one’s knowledge of the
subject. In other words, a synthetic judgment is one whose truth is not so derived but
which affirms something in the predicate that is not already contained in the subject. For
Kant, “all bodies are heavy” is an example of a synthetic judgment, since the idea of
heaviness is not contained in the concept of body; that is, the predicate is not contained in
the subject.
25
That is, synthetic judgment’s predicate adds something new that cannot be
gleaned from the concept itself. Two independent concepts, body and heavy, are joined,
for the concept of body does not contain the idea of heavy. Kant then goes on to make a
further distinction between judgments that are a priori and those that are a posteriori. All
analytic judgments are a priori, since their meaning does not depend upon our experience
of any particular cases or events because they are independent of any observation, as in
the case of mathematics.
26
For the most part, synthetic judgments are a posteriori, which
occur after an experience of observation.
There is, however, still another kind of judgment besides the analytic a priori and
the synthetic a posteriori, which Kant calls the synthetic a priori. He is most concerned
with this type of judgment, since people make these judgments, and yet, there is the
23
Ibid., pp. 48-51.
24
Ibid., p. 48.
25
Ibid
.
, p. 49.
26
Ibid., p. 52.
Convention