A Level Philosophy

Types of Knowledge

• Analytic – true by definition – “Squares have 4 sides”.

• Synthetic – not analytic, true or false in the way the word is – “Ripe tomatoes are red”.

• A priori – doesn’t require sense experience to know – “all bachelors are unmarried”.

• A posteriori – can be established through sense experience – “Snow is white”.

All Analytic propositions are known a priori. This doesn’t mean that all a priori propositions are analytic. The main question is “Are all synthetic propositions a posteriori?” i.e; do we have some knowledge that doesn’t come from sense experience? It is this question that forms the debate between rationalism and empiricism.