Analytic” sentences, such as “Pediatricians are doctors,” have historically been

characterized as ones that are true by virtue of the meanings of their words alone and/or
can be known to be so solely by knowing those meanings. They are contrasted with more
usual “synthetic” sentences, such as “Pediatricians are rich,” (knowledge of) whose truth
depends also upon (knowledge of) the worldly fortunes of pediatricians. Beginning with
Frege, many philosophers hoped to show that the truths of logic and mathematics and
other apparently a priori domains, such as much of philosophy and the foundations of
science, could be shown to be analytic by careful “conceptual analysis” of the meanings
of crucial words. Analyses of philosophically important terms and concepts, such as
“material object,” “cause,” “freedom,” or “knowledge” turned out, however, to be far
more problematic than philosophers had anticipated, and some, particularly Quine and his
followers, began to doubt the reality of the distinction. In all judgments in which the
relation of a subject to the predicate is thought (if I only consider affirmative judgments,
since the application to negative ones is easy) this relation is possible in two different
ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly)
contained in this concept A; or B lies entirely outside the concept A, though to be sure it
stands in connection with it. In the first case, I call the judgment analytic, in the second
synthetic. (1787 [1998], B10). He provided as an example of an analytic judgment, “All
bodies are extended”: in thinking of a body we can’t help but also think of it being
extended in space; that would seem to be just part of what is meant by “body.” He
contrasted this with “All bodies are heavy,” where the predicate (“is heavy”) “is
something entirely different from that which I think in the mere concept of body in
general” (B11), and we must put together, or “synthesize,” the different concepts, body
and heavy (sometimes such concepts are called “ampliative,” “amplifying” a concept
beyond what is “contained” in it). One reason Kant may not have noticed the differences
between his different characterizations of the analytic was that his conception of “logic”
seems to have been confined to Aristotelian syllogistic, and so didn’t include the full
resources of modern logic, where, as we’ll see, the differences between the two
characterizations become more glaring (see MacFarlane 2002). Indeed, Kant demarcates
the category of the analytic chiefly in order to contrast it with what he regards as the more
important category of the “synthetic,” which he famously thinks is not confined, as one
might initially suppose, merely to the empirical. [2] He argues that even so elementary an
example in arithmetic as 7+5=12 is synthetic, since the concept of 12 is not contained in
the concepts of 7, 5, or +,: appreciating the truth of the proposition would seem to require
some kind of active “synthesis” by the mind uniting the different constituent thoughts
(1787 [1998], B15). And so we arrive at the category of the “synthetic a priori,” whose
very possibility became a major concern of his work. Kant tried to show that the activity
of synthesis was the source of the important cases of a priori knowledge, not only in
arithmetic, but also in geometry, the foundations of physics, ethics, and philosophy
generally, a controversial view that set the stage for much of the philosophical
discussions of the subsequent centuries (see Coffa 1991, pt. I). The terms “a priori” and
“a posteriori” are used primarily to denote the foundations upon which
a proposition is known. A given proposition is knowable a priori if it can be known
independent of any experience other than the experience of learning the language in
which the proposition is expressed, whereas a proposition that is knowable a
posteriori is known on the basis of experience. For example, the proposition that all
bachelors are unmarried is a priori, and the proposition that it is raining outside now
is a posteriori. he distinction between the two terms is epistemological and
immediately relates to the justification for why a given item of knowledge is held. For
instance, a person who knows (a priori) that “All bachelors are unmarried” need not
have experienced the unmarried status of all—or indeed any—bachelors to justify this
proposition. By contrast, if I know that “It is raining outside,” knowledge of this
proposition must be justified by appealing to someone’s experience of the weather.
The a priori /a posteriori distinction, as is shown below, should not be confused with
the similar dichotomy of the necessary and the contingent or the dichotomy of the
analytic and the synthetic. Nonetheless, the a priori /a posteriori distinction is itself
not without controversy. The major sticking-points historically have been how to
define the concept of the “experience” on which the distinction is grounded, and
whether or in what sense knowledge can indeed exist independently of all
experience. The latter issue raises important questions regarding the positive, that is,
actual, basis of a priori knowledge — questions which a wide range of philosophers
have attempted to answer. Kant, for instance, advocated a “transcendental” form of
justification involving “rational insight” that is connected to, but does not
immediately arise from, empirical experience
Some philosophers have equated the analytic with the a priori and the synthetic with
the a posteriori. There is, to be sure, a close connection between the concepts. For
instance, if the truth of a certain proposition is, say, strictly a matter of the definition
of its terms, knowledge of this proposition is unlikely to require experience (rational
reflection alone will likely suffice). On the other hand, if the truth of a proposition
depends on how the world actually is in some respect, then knowledge of it would
seem to require empirical investigation.

Despite this close connection, the two distinctions are not identical. First, the a
priori/a posteriori distinction is epistemological: it concerns how, or on what basis, a
proposition might be known or justifiably believed. The analytic/synthetic
distinction, by contrast, is logical or semantical: it refers to what makes a given
proposition true, or to certain intentional relations that obtain between concepts that
constitute a proposition.

It is open to question, moreover, whether the a priori even coincides with the analytic
or the a posteriori with the synthetic. First, many philosophers have thought that
there are (or at least might be) instances of synthetic a priori justification. Consider,
for example, the claim that if something is red all over then it is not green all over.
Belief in this claim is apparently justifiable independently of experience. Simply by
thinking about what it is for something to be red all over, it is immediately clear that
a particular object with this quality cannot, at the same time, have the quality of
being green all over. But it also seems clear that the proposition in question is not
analytic. Being green all over is not part of the definition of being red all over, nor is
it included within the concept of being red all over. If examples like this are to be
taken at face value, it is a mistake to think that if a proposition is a priori, it must also
be analytic. Third, there is no principled reason for thinking that every proposition
must be knowable. Some analytic and some synthetic propositions may simply be
unknowable, at least for cognitive agents like us. We may, for instance, simply be
conceptually or constitutionally incapable of grasping the meaning of, or the
supporting grounds for, certain propositions. If so, a proposition’s being analytic
does not entail that it is a priori, nor does a proposition’s being synthetic entail that it
is a posteriori. This raises the question of the sense in which a claim must be
knowable if it is to qualify as either a priori or a posteriori. For whom must such a
claim be knowable? Any rational being? Any or most rational human beings? God
alone? There may be no entirely nonarbitrary way to provide a very precise answer to
this question. Nevertheless, it would seem a mistake to define “knowable” so broadly
that a proposition could qualify as either a priori or a posteriori if it were knowable
only by a very select group of human beings, or perhaps only by a nonhuman or
divine being. And yet, the more narrow the definition of “knowable,” the more likely
it is that certain propositions will turn out to be unknowable. “Goldbach’s conjecture”
– the claim that every even integer greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers
– is sometimes cited as an example of a proposition that may be unknowable by any
human being (Kripke 1972). In a retrospective remark from the Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics (1783), Kant says that his faith in this rationalist assumption
was shaken by David Hume (1711-1776), whose skepticism regarding the possibility
of knowledge of causal necessary connections awoke Kant from his “dogmatic
slumber” . he solution to Hume’s skepticism, which would form the basis of the
critical philosophy, was twofold. The first part of Kant’s solution was to agree with
Hume that metaphysical knowledge (such as knowledge of causation) is neither given
through the senses, nor is it known a priori through conceptual analysis. Kant
argued, however, that there is a third kind of knowledge which is a priori, yet which
is not known simply by analyzing concepts. He referred to this as “synthetic a
priori knowledge.” Where analytic judgments are justified by the semantic relations
between the concepts they mention (for example, “all bachelors are unmarried”),
synthetic judgments are justified by their conformity to the given object that they
describe (for example, “this ball right here is red”). The puzzle posed by the notion of
synthetic a priori knowledge is that it would require that an object be presented to
the mind, but not be given in sensory experience. The second part of Kant’s solution
is to explain how synthetic a priori knowledge could be possible. He describes his
key insight on this matter as a “Copernican” shift in his thinking about the epistemic
relation between the mind and the world. Copernicus had realized that it
only appeared as though the sun and stars revolved around us, and that we could
have knowledge of the way the solar system really was if we took into account the fact
that the sky looks the way it does because we perceivers are moving. Analogously,
Kant realized that we must reject the belief that the way things appear corresponds to
the way things are in themselves. Furthermore, he argued that the objects of
knowledge can only ever be things as they appear, not as they are in themselves.
Appealing to this new approach to metaphysics and epistemology, Kant argued that
we must investigate the most basic structures of experience (that is, the structures of
the way things appear to us), because the basic structures of experience will coincide
with the basic structures of any objects that could possibly be experienced. In other
words, if it is only possible to have experience of an object if the object conforms to
the conditions of experience, then knowing the conditions of experience will give us
knowledge – synthetic a priori knowledge in fact – of every possible object of
experience. Kant overcomes Hume’s skepticism by showing that we can have
synthetic a priori knowledge of objects in general when we take as the object of our
investigation the very form of a possible object of experience. Critique of Pure
Reason is an attempt to work through all of the important details of this basic
philosophical strategy. Though some key ideas of the Critique of Pure Reason were
adumbrated in Kant’s Inaugural Dissertation of 1770 (in Writings), this first Critique is
revolutionary in the sense that, because of it, the history of philosophy became
radically different from what it had been before its publication.  We cannot
adequately explore all of the game-changing details of the epistemology (theory of
knowledge) he develops there, which has been discussed elsewhere in the IEP (see
“Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics”), but will only consider the elements that have a direct
bearing on his philosophy of religion.
The monumental breakthrough of this book is Kant’s invention of the transcendental
method in philosophy, which allows him to discover a middle path between modern
rationalism, which attributes intellectual intuition (for example, innate ideas) to
humans, enabling them to have universal and necessary factual knowledge, and
modern empiricism, which maintains that we only have sensible intuition, making it
difficult to see how we can ever achieve universal and necessary factual knowledge
through reason.  Kant argues that both sides are partly correct and partly mistaken. 
He agrees with the empiricists that all human factual knowledge begins with sensible
intuition (which is the only sort we have), but avoids the skeptical conclusions to
which this leads them by agreeing with the rationalists that we bring something a
priori to the knowing process, while rejecting their dogmatic assumption that it must
be the innate ideas of intellectual intuition.  According to Kant, universal and
necessary factual knowledge requires both sensible experience, providing its content,
and a priori structures of the mind, providing its form.  Either without the other is
insufficient.  He famously writes, “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions
without concepts are blind” (Critique, A51/B75).  Without empirical, sensible content,
there is nothing for us to know; but without those a priori structures, we have no way
of giving intelligible form to whatever content we may have.
The transcendental method seeks the necessary a priori conditions of experience, of
knowledge, and of metaphysical speculation.  The two a priori forms of sensibility are
time and space:  that is, for us to make sense of them, all objects of sensation,
whether external or internal, must be temporally organizable and all objects of
external sensation must also be spatially organizable.  But time and space are only
forms of experience and not objects of experience, and they can only be known to
apply to objects of sensible intuition.  When sensory inputs are received by us and
spatio-temporally organized, the a priori necessary condition of our having objective
knowledge is that one or more of twelve concepts of the understanding, also called
“categories,” must be applied to our spatio-temporal representations.  These twelve
categories include reality, unity, substance, causality, and existence.  Again, none of
them is an object of experience; rather, they are all categories of the human mind,
necessary for our knowing any objects of experience.  And, again, they can only be
known to apply to objects of sensible intuition.  Now, by its very nature, metaphysics
(including theology) necessarily speculates about ultimate reality that is not given to
sensible intuition and therefore transcends any and all human perceptual
experience.  It is a fact of human experience that we do engage in metaphysical
speculation.  So what are the transcendental conditions of our capacity to do so? 
Kant’s answer is that they are the three a priori ideas of pure reason—the self or soul,
the cosmos or universe as an orderly whole, and God, the one of direct concern to us
here.  But, as we never can have sensible experience of objects corresponding to such
transcendent ideas and as the concepts of the understanding, without which human
knowledge is impossible, can only be known to apply to objects of possible
experience, knowledge of the soul, of the cosmos, and of God is impossible, in
principle.
So what are we to make of ideas that can never yield knowledge?  Here Kant makes
another innovative contribution to epistemology.  He says that ideas can have two
possible functions in human thinking.  Some (for example, empirical) ideas have a
“constitutive” function, in that they can be used to constitute knowledge, while others
have only a “regulative” function (Critique, A180/B222), in that, while they can never
constitute knowledge, they do serve the heuristic purpose of regulating our thought
and action.  This is related to Kant’s dualistic distinction between the aspect of reality
that comprises all phenomenal appearances and that which involves our noumenal
ideas of things-in-themselves.  (Although it is important, we cannot here explore this
distinction in the depth it deserves.)  Because metaphysical ideas are unknowable,
they cannot serve any “constitutive” function.  Still, they have great “regulative” value
for both our thinking and our voluntary choices.  They are relevant to our value-
commitments, including those of a religious sort.  Three such regulative ideas are
Kant’s postulates of practical reason, which are “God, freedom, and immortality”
(Critique, A3/B7).  Although none of them refers to an object of empirical knowledge,
he maintains that it is reasonable for us to postulate them as matters of rational
faith.  This sort of belief, which is subjectively, but not objectively, justifiable, is a
middle ground between certain knowledge, which is objectively, as well as
subjectively, justified, and mere arbitrary opinion, which is not even subjectively
justified (Critique, A822/B850).  Such rational belief can be religious—namely, faith
in God.
Kant presents four logical puzzles that he calls “antinomies” to establish the natural
dialectical illusions that our reason inevitably encounters when it engages
metaphysical questions about cosmology in an open-minded fashion.  The fourth of
these particularly concerns us here, as reason purports to be able to prove both that
there must be an absolutely necessary Being and that no such Being can exist.  His
dualism can expose this apparent contradiction as bogus, maintaining that in the
realm of phenomenal appearances, everything exists contingently, with no necessary
Being, but that in the realm of noumenal things-in-themselves there can be such a
necessary Being.

But, we might wonder, what about the traditional arguments for God?  If even one of
them proves logically conclusive, would not that constitute some sort of knowledge of
God?  Here we encounter yet another great passage in the first Critique, where Kant’s
epistemology leads him to a trenchant undermining of all such arguments.  He
maintains that there is a trichotomy of types of speculative arguments for God:  the
“physico-theological” Argument from Design, various Cosmological Arguments, and
the non-empirical “Ontological” Argument.  He cleverly shows that the first of these,
even if it worked, would only establish a relatively intelligent and powerful architect
of the world and not a necessarily existing Creator.  In order to establish it as a
necessary Being, some version of the second approach is needed.  But, if that worked,
it would still fail to show that the necessary creator is an infinitely perfect Being,
worthy of religious devotion.  Only the Ontological Argument will suffice to establish
that.  But here the problems accumulate.  The Ontological Argument fails because it
tries to attribute infinite, necessary existence to God; but existence, far from being a
real predicate of anything, is merely a concept of the human understanding.  Then
the cosmological arguments also fail, in trying to establish that God is the necessary
ultimate cause of the world, for both causality and necessity are merely categories of
human understanding.  Although Kant exhibits considerable respect for the
teleological argument from design, in addition to its conclusion being so
disappointingly limited, it also fails as a logical demonstration, in trying to show that
an intelligent Designer must exist to account for the alleged intelligent design of the
world. The problem is that we do not and cannot ever experience the world as a
coherent whole, so that the argument’s premise is merely assumed without
foundation.  Thus Kant undermines the entire project of any philosophical theology
that pretends to establish any knowledge of God (Critique, A592/B620-A614/B642
and A620/B648-A636/B664).  Yet he remains a champion of religious faith as
rationally justifiable.  So how can he make such a position philosophically credible?