СИНТЕТИЧЕСКОЕ И АНАЛИТИЧЕСКОЕ

Synthetic and Analytic

Concepts in logical semantics. All propositions in a system fall into two types: those whose truth can be established only on the basis of the rules governing the given system without recourse to facts, and those whose truth or falsity cannot be ascertained by the rules alone but requires recourse to facts. The former are analytic, the latter synthetic.

A strict distinction between Synthetic and Analytic has a meaning only for a given formalised language. In the history of philosophy, the problem of the Synthetic and Analytic is closely associated with the distinction between empirical (factual) knowledge and theoretical knowledge (of laws). Leibniz expressed this distinction by the division of all truths into necessary truths (theoretical knowledge) and accidental truths (factual knowledge).

Kant defined as analytic, in opposition to synthetic, those judgements whose predicate is contained in, and identical with, the subject. They are independent of experience. Continuing this tradition, modern formal logicians distinguish between logical truth (analytic statements) and factual truth (synthetic statements). Analytic statements do not communicate any information about reality (they are tautological); they constitute the content of the formal sciences (mathematics and logic); synthetic statements are based on experience and constitute the content of the empirical sciences. The former are a priori statements, the latter a posteriori.

From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, all statements of any science are based in the last resort on experience. The division of statements into Analytic and Synthetic is conditioned by their place in a definite logical system of knowledge.