GENIUS FORUMS

Okay, forging ahead with the ultimate slog-through of the Critique of Pure Reason...perhaps Kant's greatest contribution to philosophy was the distinction he made between analytical and synthetical judgements.

Immanuel Kant wrote in Critique of Pure Reason:

IV. Of the Difference Between Analytical and Synthetical Judgements.

In all judgements wherein the relation of a subject to the predicate is cogitated (I mention affirmative judgements only here; the application to negative will be very easy), this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as somewhat which is contained (though covertly) in the conception A; or the predicate B lies completely out of the conception A, although it stands in connection with it. In the first instance, I term the judgement analytical, in the second, synthetical. Analytical judgements (affirmative) are therefore those in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is cogitated through identity; those in which this connection is cogitated without identity, are called synthetical judgements. The former may be called explicative, the latter augmentative* judgements; because the former add in the predicate nothing to the conception of the subject, but only analyse it into its constituent conceptions, which were thought already in the subject, although in a confused manner; the latter add to our conceptions of the subject a predicate which was not contained in it, and which no analysis could ever have discovered therein.

Unfortunately, his inability to explain the idea clearly, and perhaps his own lack of clarity, or most likely his foolish belief in things-in-themselves, led to a lot of misunderstandings about it, which is how you end up with refutations like this:

Willard Van Orman Quine wrote in Two Dogmas of Empiricism:

Kant conceived of an analytic statement as one that attributes to its subject no more than is already conceptually contained in the subject. This formulation has two shortcomings: it limits itself to statements of subject-predicate form, and it appeals to a notion of containment which is left at a metaphorical level. But Kant's intent, evident more from the use he makes of the notion of analyticity than from his definition of it, can be restated thus: a statement is analytic when it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact.

He then grabs onto this idea of meaning like a vine and swings all over the place. It's pretty embarrassing, but far from uncommon.

I think Kant was headed in the right direction, but he got caught up in mental blocks and couldn't clarify his thoughts well enough, so his ideas of analytical and synthetical are pretty much wrong. Is it really possible to misunderstand your own ideas? Only in philosophy.

Here is a proper understanding of it, as demonstrated by David:

David Quinn wrote:

Take the conception, "all bachelors are over six feet tall", as an example. This conception can either be an empirical theory or a pure definition, depending on the intentions of the person creating the conception and how it is constructed. If it is meant to be an empirical theory, and if a bachelor remains defined as an unmarried man, then it can be tested empirically.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out the difference in David's understanding because I don't feel like explaining it right now.

And I'll throw this in, too, just for kicks.

Kierkegaard wrote in Philosophical Fragments:

It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists--worse still, for the brave souls who venture to do it, the difficulty is of such a kind that fame by no means awaits those who are preoccupied with it. The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore, whether I am moving in the world of sensate palpability or in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who does indeed exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium [addition] or the eternal prius [presupposition], it can never be demonstrated.

I don't see Quine as refuting Kant. Quinn, Quine, and Kant are all saying the same thing, and pointing to the same shortcomings inherent to language.

Kierkegaard is discussing something else in the above quote; he is clarifying exactly what is being pointed at.

In the above quotations, Quinn, Quine, and Kant are talking about the finger; Kierkegaard is talking about the moon.
.

Wittgenstein first formulated the notion of "meaning as use" which can be used to dismiss any number of philosophical problems. The problem with such things is that few philosophers are willing to apply such notions in the thoroughgoing manner that seems to ultimately lead one to the anti-theoretical perspective that Wittgenstein himself adopted with all of its rather implicit irony. I tend to favor such an approach to things, but hypocritically so, as I'm obviously given to the sort of nonsense blather that such a view holds as ultimately meaningless.

Add Wittgenstein to this thread and we'd have the complete set of wankers.

Edit: opps, sorry he already had been.

These cunts fuck around as if they are actually saying something useful. There is zero philosophical use in the total sum of their works.

Analytical/Synthetical - what is the point, why does it matter at all. It matters to porfessors because it is the act of defining, and from defining they can find self-worth. It gives them something to mark students by.

I still say science in the last 20 years blow these fuckers out of contention.

James,

These cunts fuck around as if they are actually saying something useful. There is zero philosophical use in the total sum of their works.

I'm wondering what philosophical perspective you yourself favor. Not that I expect you to detail it in a post or anything, but perhaps you agree with something, that some thinker, at some point in history happened to suggest? Or are your ideas utterly fresh?

James,

I still say science in the last 20 years blow these fuckers out of contention.

What do you consider to be science? The inconsequential metaphysical claims that scientists occasionally make to explain their data, or simply the raw data collected in order to make predictions? Both? It would seem to me that in the first case scientists are just acting the part of rather careless philosophers. I believe it was the scientist Richard Feynman who said "shut up and calculate" due to such things. In the second case, I'd suggest that what data they collect simply doesn't compete with philosophy in any sort of way. If scientific data disagrees with a philosophical system, then we should have to abandon that philosophical opinion, but I don't know many folks mentioned in this thread who could have their ideas so easily dismissed.

To me there is only materialism (not that there is any material to speak of, it is all actually just causal forces).

Quinne, Kant and the idiot Wittie boy, are just moving definitions around. They are paper shufflers, re-definers for their own purposes.

Quinne was far too attqched to mathematics - to making definitions. Definitions move one away from reality.
Kant was far too attached to religion, to a higher power. (asd was Keirkie)
Wittie -was far too attached to his own ego. He was a strutter.

None of them had any originality at all, rather they were women who manipulated what real men said to their own devices.

Ask yourself, how many quotes or maxims that are in general use, that these dudes created.

None, what so-ever. Kant had his apiori crap, but really ask yourself "does this just not confuse the issue". If I am going to consider the basic nature of the human mind, then I'll stick to what science indicates as being of a causal nature, not some irrelevant categorisations.

What do you consider to be science?

Anything that logically explains why something was caused.

People can talk about the effect side of things as much as they want, as per the philosophers referred to above, but they will never get anywhere, because effects are too subjective. I could create mutliple descriptive definitions of the one effect, and so can everyone else.

What do you consider to be science?

Anything that logically explains why something was caused.

People can talk about the effect side of things as much as they want, as per the philosophers referred to above, but they will never get anywhere, because effects are too subjective. I could create mutliple descriptive definitions of the one effect, and so can everyone else.

Well, who can explain that? Two posts, two minutes apart, that are identical. It's like watching the monitors of two cameras on James' mind at two different angles.

Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as somewhat which is contained (though covertly) in the conception A; or the predicate B lies completely out of the conception A, although it stands in connection with it.

The tree contains the seed; the tree contains growth.

In the first instance, I term the judgement analytical, in the second, synthetical. Analytical judgements (affirmative) are therefore those in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is cogitated through identity;

Through identity the affirmitive is known, due to a conceptual (universal) basis with which to draw from.

those in which this connection is cogitated without identity, are called synthetical judgements.

Without identity, a synthetical judgement is necessary, to bring together a part with its ambiguous (though relevant) whole.

Take the conception, "all bachelors are over six feet
tall", as an example. This conception can either be an empirical theory or a pure definition, depending on the intentions of the person creating the conception and how it is constructed. If it is meant to be an empirical theory, and if a bachelor remains defined as an unmarried man, then it can be tested empirically.

The synthetic is the empirical (uncertain identity), the analytic is the pure definition - a definition brought together by a given identity.

I agree with you Steven, but I don't think synthetic judgements are necessarily empirical. But I can't really decide, that's why I haven't been able to summarize the stuff I put in original post, which is what I planned on doing.

If I define synthetic as merely a non-definitional judgement, does that automatically make it empirical? If I make a judgement about concepts, but it's based on the appearance of concepts rather than the content, does that count as empirical?

Matt Gregory wrote:If I define synthetic as merely a non-definitional judgement, does that automatically make it empirical? If I make a judgement about concepts, but it's based on the appearance of concepts rather than the content, does that count as empirical?

Yeah, a judgement based on the appearence of concepts (their underlying logic), wouldn't necessarily be empirical - though that is a fine line to draw.

So do you equate the appearance of a concept with the logic of it? Because that doesn't make sense to me. You can think of the sequence of symbols 2+2=4 in your head without understanding the logic of that sequence.

Adding the logic would be analytic . . .

Okay.

Yeah, so the synthetic model wouldn't necessarily require logic in order to function. I must have thought that it did require logic because it's difficult to conceive of a non-empirical, non-logical appearence.

Alas, forgot about using math as an example.

Well, the synthetic does require logic, it's just used in a different way. I'm thinking of the inverse of the situation David Quinn gave. He said:

Take the conception, "all bachelors are over six feet tall", as an example. This conception can either be an empirical theory or a pure definition, depending on the intentions of the person creating the conception and how it is constructed.

Okay but now let's take 2+2=4. It can be an analytic statement, a truth by definition, or, I'm thinking it can be a synthetic appearance, I guess. I mean no matter whether we discern the logic of it or not, the symbols did appear to us, didn't they? I'm thinking that phenomenon would be empirical if you referred to it by saying "2+2=4", because I don't see any other way to account for it.

No, I screwed that all up by unconsciously changing the statement from "2+2=4" to a statement about "2+2=4" and falsely equating them. They both (analytic and synthetic) have to stay within the statement "2+2=4" for this to work, but Kant called such statements synthetic because the concept of "4" is nowhere contained in the definitions of any of the other concepts nor vice versa.

Here's where I think Kant's duality is useless, because the truth of 2+2=4 is analytic based entirely on definition, even though the definitions don't explicitly contain each other. So I think Kant's idea of synthetic should be revised or maybe even dropped entirely, since if the distinction no longer rests on whether the concepts are explicit in the definition, then everything could be considered analytic because the predicate of any statement can be considered part of the subject, just implicit and contained "in a confused manner".

Maybe the proper distinction that should be drawn is:

analytic = the predicate is certainly part of the definition of the subject
synthetic = the predicate is uncertainly part of the definition of the subject

But then that leaves synthetic outside of the a priori category. Hmm, this is getting pretty tough!

Matt,

because the truth of 2+2=4 is analytic based entirely on definition

Is it? If I were to place what I call "two" objects next to another "two" objects, then I would find what I call "four" objects. To me the truth of the statement seems "based entirely on definition" to the extant that the proposition "i have an apple in the refrigerator" is.

Yeah, well, "I have an apple in the refrigerator" is a concept you formed in your head based on the situation you experienced (putting an apple in the fridge). In other words, it's a definition.

The truth of the apple in the fridge depends on experience. If you go open the fridge and find no apple in there, then the definition of "I have an apple in the refrigerator" would no longer apply to anything in experience and therefore be considered false.

The difference lies in the fact that mathematics is built on definitions alone. 2 isn't a tangible object, it's more like an adjective that can be applied to anything that you want to consider being 2. So, 2+2=4 is true whether you have four objects or not. The truth of it doesn't depend on experience.

Matt,

Yeah, well, "I have an apple in the refrigerator" is a concept you formed in your head based on the situation you experienced (putting an apple in the fridge). In other words, it's a definition.

You have a very odd definition of the term "definition". "I have an apple in the refrigerator" is a proposition certainly, but I really wouldn't call it a definition.

The difference lies in the fact that mathematics is built on definitions alone. 2 isn't a tangible object, it's more like an adjective that can be applied to anything that you want to consider being 2. So, 2+2=4 is true whether you have four objects or not. The truth of it doesn't depend on experience.

The term "two" has a meaning that's commonly agreed upon. If I place one apple in front of you, and declare that there are two apples, you could rightly accuse me of being mistaken or supremely confused. The term "red" also has a meaning that is commonly agreed upon. If I were to place a red apple in front of you, and suggest that it is a blue apple, you could easily accuse me of being confused or color-blind. Now, in neither case does the quality--"twoness" or "redness"--exist independently of the object: an apple(s). Nevertheless, in both cases you could empirically say that my statement was false. If it can be demonstrated that one can make empirical judgments on the truth of statements involving the quality of "twoness", then seemingly we can make an empirical judgment concerning the fourness of a pair of twos.

Lets say I were to place 1328 objects in front of you. You then counted the objects to ensure that yes, there were 1328 of them, and reported this finding to me. Would you then know, without thinking at all about it, that 569+435+324=1328? If not, then it would seem that 569+435+324 isn't the definition of 1328, given that you seemed to understand the term fine without knowing it to be the sum of those numbers. Nevertheless, presumably, using the definition you did happen to know off hand, you'd be able to figure out that it was the sum of those numbers. Thus, mathematical equations aren't true by definition: they aren't analytic.

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:

Yeah, well, "I have an apple in the refrigerator" is a concept you formed in your head based on the situation you experienced (putting an apple in the fridge). In other words, it's a definition.

You have a very odd definition of the term "definition".

Not really. It's the meaning that matters, not the words. So whether you use one word or multiple words to describe your meaning, it doesn't matter as far as the meaning is concerned. In a perfect world, you would only need one word for each meaning you would want to describe, but that's not possible, so we create statements and propositions and books and things.

"I have an apple in the refrigerator" is a proposition certainly, but I really wouldn't call it a definition.

They have the same basic nature.

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:

The difference lies in the fact that mathematics is built on definitions alone. 2 isn't a tangible object, it's more like an adjective that can be applied to anything that you want to consider being 2. So, 2+2=4 is true whether you have four objects or not. The truth of it doesn't depend on experience.

The term "two" has a meaning that's commonly agreed upon.

True, but whether it's you who's deciding to use the concept of "two" in a certain way or the whole of humanity deciding, it's still something that's decided. There's a conscious mind applying the concept. "Two" isn't leaping out at us when we see two objects together.

If I place one apple in front of you, and declare that there are two apples, you could rightly accuse me of being mistaken or supremely confused.

You could apply it in a different way, like saying "two halves of an apple" or "the apple weighs two units of weight" or whatever.

The term "red" also has a meaning that is commonly agreed upon. If I were to place a red apple in front of you, and suggest that it is a blue apple, you could easily accuse me of being confused or color-blind. Now, in neither case does the quality--"twoness" or "redness"--exist independently of the object: an apple(s). Nevertheless, in both cases you could empirically say that my statement was false. If it can be demonstrated that one can make empirical judgments on the truth of statements involving the quality of "twoness", then seemingly we can make an empirical judgment concerning the fourness of a pair of twos.

Well, the mind is one the causes of "two", "red" and even "apple". Both in the creation and in the application of a concept the mind is a cause.

Lets say I were to place 1328 objects in front of you. You then counted the objects to ensure that yes, there were 1328 of them, and reported this finding to me. Would you then know, without thinking at all about it, that 569+435+324=1328? If not, then it would seem that 569+435+324 isn't the definition of 1328, given that you seemed to understand the term fine without knowing it to be the sum of those numbers. Nevertheless, presumably, using the definition you did happen to know off hand, you'd be able to figure out that it was the sum of those numbers. Thus, mathematical equations aren't true by definition: they aren't analytic.

But I didn't know 1328 was 1+1+1+....+1, either until I counted them all up. What's the difference?

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:Lets say I were to place 1328 objects in front of you. You then counted the objects to ensure that yes, there were 1328 of them, and reported this finding to me. Would you then know, without thinking at all about it, that 569+435+324=1328?

You would probably have to think about it, since 1328 can be subdivided in many different ways.

Nevertheless, presumably, using the definition you did happen to know off hand, you'd be able to figure out that it was the sum of those numbers. Thus, mathematical equations aren't true by definition: they aren't analytic.

No, the mathematical equation is true by definition (of all the symbols involved).
That you can not see that a particular equation is true or false by inspection is irrelevant. That's why there are formalized methods of proofs.

Why do you think an analytic truth must be obvious?

Thanks, Dave. That was the point I was trying to make.

Well, I think the analytic and synthetic distinction is false because there is no absolute way to determine whether a predicate is contained within the subject or not. Kant says:

[analytic/explicative judgements] add in the predicate nothing to the conception of the subject, but only analyse it into its constituent conceptions, which were thought already in the subject, although in a confused manner

The problem is, you can analyze a conception infinitely, so any judgement deemed synthetic can be seen to be analytic if you analyze it enough. I think Kant's view of language must have been overly fixed. Language is very flexible and the boundaries it creates are only as solid as the language that is used to describe them. So when you go to analyze a statement with more language, you've already begun to change the boundaries of the original statement.

Let me demonstrate the absurdity of all this. My windows have these white shades on them, so I'll analyze the statement "the shades are white". Okay, so "shades" is the subject and "white" is the predicate. Analytic or synthetic? Is "white" part of the concept of "shades" or something apart but connected to it? I suppose Kant would say it's synthetic because shades aren't necessarily white.

But we run into a problem. Is the subject "shades" or "the shades" meaning "my shades"? I said that those white shades over there are "my shades" so by definition my shades are white and therefore "the shades are white" would be analytic.

So it becomes analytic if we're being very precise about the subject, but since Kant didn't conceive of things that way, let's deal with the generalization of "shades", and pretend that it's not a completely retarded way of thinking to deal with reified generalizations.

Okay, so now "shades" has a particular definition, let's look in the dictionary: Okay, dictionary.com says "window shade", so I'll have to go over there: "a shade or blind for a window, as a sheet of cloth or paper on a spring roller." Well, that's not the type of shade I'm talking about. This is a bunch of plastic slats that hang from a track that's bolted into the ceiling. Let's just use that as the definition, because if they're not called shades, then I don't know what the fuck they're called, and I don't give a shit what they're called anyway. Does it matter what the exact word is? No, it doesn't.

So, shades are "a bunch of plastic slats that hang from a track that's bolted into the ceiling." Notice how I left "white" out of it, which makes it all look very synthetic, doesn't it? But, if you look closely, analyzing it into its constituent conceptions, which were thought already in the subject, although in a confused manner, you'll see that the "slats" which form the most important part of the shades can be either visible or invisible. Now, which do you think they are? Be very careful, I know it's tough....that's right! They are visible. If they were invisible, the light would shine through and they would be thoroughly useless as shades. So shades must be visible, and therefore visibility must have been a part of our definition of shades all along and therefore it's analytic to say that shades are visible. Do you see where I'm going with this yet?

Okay so if something is visible, doesn't it need to have a color? And if something has a color, does it need to be white? No? Must it be...black? Blue? Green? So, just because something is visible doesn't mean that it is necessarily white, so we can't go by that in our refutation of syntheticness, but if something is visible, does that mean it must not be white? Or not black? Or not blue? Or not whatever other friggin' color you can think of? No, it doesn't mean that either. What it means is that it can be any color at all. Therefore, all colors are included within the concept of visibility, because for visibility to be present there must be something that endows a thing with this property and color is one possibility.

So, clearly, white is included in the concept of color, color is included within the concept of visibility, and visibility is included within the concept of shades and therefore, "the shades are white" is an analytic statement. Like mathematics, it's both analytic and synthetic, proving that the whole analytic/synthetic distinction is meaningless.