The Synthetic reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Synthetic

Generally, synthetic means man-made.

In philosophy, a statement is said to be "synthetic" if its truth cannot be determined through analysis of its meaning. Whereas, for example, the statement

Vegetarians don't eat meat.

is true by virtue of the meanings of its words,

Quadrupeds don't eat meat.

is not. In the latter case, one can decide the truth or falsity of the statement by going out and observing some quadrupeds: if we observe just one quadruped that does eat meat, we can declare the second sentence to be false. But if you go out to observe vegetarians, you have already prejudged the issue.

Those statements that can be seen to be true (or false) by virtue of the meanings of their words are termed "analytic".

See also: Synthetic proposition, Synthesis

This is the "Synthetic" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.