How do we have knowledge of the sort that explains the consistent features of our experience?

Analytic

- Learned through reason alone, never experience.

Synthetic

- Most are learned by experience, but some can only be learned through reason.

- Necessarily true.

- Explicative: they "unpack" concepts but do not add to our knowledge.

- Most are only contingently true, but some are necessary truths.

- Ampliative: they do add to our knowledge

All propositions we can know are of two types:

Kinds of Knowable Proposition

Ways in which Propositions are Known

Analytic

Synthetic

a priori

a posteriori

Ordinary experiential statements, e.g.

"It rained today."

"The sun rises in the East."

Necessary conditions for the possibility of experience , e.g. "There is an order to the universe."

Conceptual truths, e.g.

"If A=B and B=C, then A=C."

"All humans bear the DNA of Homo sapiens sapiens."