When I was in class one day, I mentioned a news item I once read while travelling: Live Tiger Found in Bag Full of Toy Tigers at Thai Airport.

On Aug. 22 of that year, airport security officials in Bangkok detected something suspicious in an oversize suitcase. X rays indicated that along with stuffed animals, the bag contained bones… which belonged to a tranquilized two-month-old tiger. The bag, which had been checked by a 31-year old Thai woman, was en route to Iran.

It’s a shocking situation — smuggling a baby tiger? At the time of reading it, I was at an airport listening to planes leaving runways, and it’s not unusual to see someone being asked questions about their luggage (in fact, it happened at the time I first wrote this, while arriving from Perth).

It lead me to wonder — how many people on an average day at this airport might be carrying something illegal, maybe an illegally smuggled live animal, with the belief that ‘this animal is nothing more than a toy for me to profit from?’

That’s when I started thinking about analytic statements.

An analytic statement is a statement whose truth (or falsity) is a matter of the meaning of the terms contained in the statement, and not a matter of facts in the world.

An analytical statement either states the definition of the word (eg. ‘unmarried men are bachelors’), or it states that the word comes under a ‘wider category’. They are true by their definition, and are generally self-explanatory.

So — here’s an example: A tiger is an animal.

That’s an analytic statement. We define a tiger as an animal, without necessarily having to experience anything about the tiger. If we understand the words involved (‘tiger’, ‘animal’), we know whether the statement is true — we don’t have to check in the world to know. We have common understandings of what a tiger is.

Another ways to test it is to think to yourself whether there could be exceptions to the statement. Can there possibly be ‘tigers that are not animals’? Well, no, because you certainly would not go around saying a baby tiger is just a toy — and not just because we get upset at the way this particular animal in the story has just been treated!

In regards to ethics, customs officers and many countries recognise a tiger is an animal with certain rights that it is afforded certain protections — certainly not allowed to be taken out of the country to be sold illegally! While the moral element does influence my thoughts about the tiger, no matter what the situation — we would still think of a tiger as an animal.

What about the statement: Tigers are yellow?

This statement requires empirical evidence to determine whether or not it is true. Sure enough, you can find an example of a tiger that is white, as seen in this link. So, that makes it a synthetic statement.

Write down the definition of analytic and synthetic statements in your own words— then write out five statements of your own, listing which ones are analytic and which ones are synthetic.

Some further help at analytic and synthetic statements.

Answers to yesterday’s questions: 1. Description. 2. Argument. 3. Description. 4. Explanation. 5. Argument.