Synthetic a priori
 

Can someone explain synthetic a priori as defined by Immanuel Kant to me? I've been reading up on various web pages but still don't get it. What I understood so far:

a priori: the proposition is not based on experience or perception.
synthetic: the truth value of the proposition isn't immediatly apparent and needs verification from the real world.

Somehow I don't see how those two go toghether... :hmm: I need some examples... anyone? :confused:

Thanks!

You're more or less right on a priori -- though it's important that it doesn't mean, for Kant, that it can't be known from experience. That is, you can learn an a priori expression from experience, but it has to be the sort where you don't need experience to know it.

Synthetic propositions are those that add truth value beyond that given in the terms used in the proposition. So a statement like "That cat is red" is synthetic, since the term 'cat' doesn't mean the term 'red'. Kant claims (disagreeing with Hume) that there are synthetic a priori prepositions; an example of this is "2+2=4", since '2+2' doesn't mean 4.

You're confusing 'synthetic' with 'a posteriori'. For Hume they are identical, but for Kant, they are.

Okay, I think its starting to dawn on me. Thanks.

Do you have any other examples you could think of? That'd be great. :thumbsup:

While a bit unrelated to the topic I think it is relevant. Building a philosophical opinion that is based primarily off of second hand information (parts of the internet) is a slipshodish way to go about understanding concepts and forming your own thoughts. This means that articles you find that deal with particular works should not be a substitute to the actual work. Surely there is no problem in using other authors commentary in parallel to the actual work.

I would suggest picking up a copy of some of Kant's work. Read it through once or twice and "translate" the meaning it for yourself. Then see what other people have to say about it.

A conclusion reached by A Priori reasoning is one achieved by pure intellect and not from emperical observation.

I don't think that she was using websites as her primary basis for forming the opinion. It sounded to me as though she had read Kant, not fully understood his use of terms (which I wouldn't blame anyone for) and then went looking for clarification. Not only is this exactly what you suggest, but it's not "forming an opinion", it's asking for a definition of terms. She wasn't asking anyone to interpret Kant's central ideas, just for clarification on the ways in which he was using (seemingly contradictory) words.

Bingle

And I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone's trying to understand Kant completely on their own in any case. There aren't that many thinkers more difficult than he is.