How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?

Something will happen.


What I like about punk rock songs is that if you don't like the song, just wait a minute. Then it's over.

I make a commitment to songs. I just commit to them. When does emotional significance start? I have things to say, people to see, things to do.

Now I've read Kant's introduction a whole lot, and I'm about to do it again. With the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant was trying to answer the question, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?"

Full skepticism goes something like, "I must withhold judgment until I am absolutely certain."

I like Kant's thesis question because it leap frogs over this stuff and gets right to the meat and potatoes.

Synthetic is the opposite of analytic. Analytic is by definition, or that which is given by definition. So we know what color a red ball is by analysis.

Here's an analytic joke,

"What color is George Washington's White Horse?"

It's not a trick question. The color is white. This should help you remember what analytic means.

Synthetic is something that is not given in the definition. Kant uses good examples of this and bad examples. An example of a synthetic statement would be "all bodies are extended." This is because there is no amount of analysis that could lead us to the necessary implications of these terms. Kant thinks that stuff like "7+5 = 12" is synthetic in addition to bodies.


Here's another joke to spice stuff up:
"I know what a heavenly body is."
"What's that?"
"When you enter the room, baby."


So there's are synthetic versus analytic distinction.

A priori to Kant means without experience. A posteriori, its twin, means with experience. That's absolutely all there is to knowing these guys.

I fell into the trap of confusion because a priori and its sister are latin. Can you guess from your prior knowledge where a priori ends up in common english? Ah, I thought that was the case.

But this is a trap because Kant doesn't think that a priori concepts are really before experience so much as they happen at the same time as experience ( I might be completely wrong here).