Lecture VII

pp. 65-72

in: Leonard Nelson, A theory of philosophical fallacies, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

If everything that we find to be true of the objects subsumed under a given concept should be made part of that concept, so that all relevant judgments in which that concept appear would thereby be rendered analytic, then all knowledge of those objects would be destroyed. For synthetic judgments contain all the real knowledge we have about the objects of our inquiries, and from analytic judgments alone no synthetic judgment can follow. Analytic judgments have one logical function: to allow for inference without losing track of what we are talking about. This principle allowed Kant to reveal the different work done in geometry by definitions (analytic) and by axioms (synthetic).