Q&A: Analyticity and a Property of an Object
Analyticity and a Property of an Object
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I’m not really managing to understand why the statement “The ball in front of me is round” is an analytic statement, whereas the statement “The ball in front of me is red” is a synthetic statement.
Seemingly, the statement “The ball in front of me is round” is analytic because it doesn’t add any knowledge I didn’t already have beforehand; that is, roundness is a characteristic of a ball. But clearly that isn’t right—it’s the other way around. In order for me to know that there is a ball in front of me, I first have to become aware that it is round. The object is only a bearer of properties, and as long as it does not have the property of roundness, it cannot be a ball.
If so, then the statement “The ball in front of me is round” is no less synthetic than the statement “The ball in front of me is red.” In both cases, the property I encountered in reality is what defined for me what I am seeing.
Answer
It’s just a technical matter. Reuven comes and tells you that he saw a ball. Now you determine that that ball was round. That is an analytic claim. Beyond that, there are analytic properties of an object that are not visible to the eye and are not required in order to recognize that this is the object in question.
And above all, even in your example this is an analytic claim. If, when you saw that it was round, you concluded that it was a ball, that itself is based on the fact that roundness is analytic to balls.