Abstract

The Kantian idea that some judgments are synthetic even in the area of a priori judgments cannot be accepted in its original version, but a modification of the notions analytic' and 'synthetic' discovers a rational core of that idea. The new definition of 'analytic' concerns concepts and makes it possible to distinguish between analytic concepts, which are effective ways of computing recursive functions, and synthetic concepts, which either define non-recursive functions, or define recursive functions in an ineffective way. To justify this claim we have to construe concepts as abstract procedures not reducible to set-theoretical entities.