The Principle of Analyticity

Abstract

The belief of modern empiricism in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic or grounded in meaning independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic or grounded in fact, was foreshadowed in Hume’s distinction drawn in the Treatise between relations which are invariable, depending solely upon ideas, and relations which may be changed without any change in ideas; and a simpler distinction made in the Enquiries between Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact. Thus, Hume, by offering criteria for analytic truths as well as for meaning, made himself a true precursor of modern empiricism.