Exam practice

1) Illustrating your answer, explain the difference between analytic and synthetic propositions (15 marks).

An analytic proposition is a statement that is true (or false) just in the virtue of the meaning of the words i.e. it is definitional. For example, 'squares have four sides' - the definition of the word 'square' is that it is four-sided, therefore we can know that the aforementioned statement is true. A second popular analytic example is 'all bachelors are unmarried men' - again, by definition, the word 'bachelor' is an unmarried man. Often analytic truths are known as Tautologies or 'logical truths', because they are true by definition. Empiricists believe that all a priori knowledge (knowledge of which does not require sense experience to be known or true) is analytic, and thus doesn't tell us anything about how the world is, since such knowledge would be true even if there world were somehow different.

Synthetic propositions are statements which are not true because of the meaning of the words, but because of the way the world is; for example, 'snow is white', or 'roses are red'. Such propositions are regarded by empiricists as contingently true, meaning that the contrary statement (e.g. snow is green) is a possibility, as well as being a posteriori (knowledge that can only be derived from sense experience).