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APODICTICITY 37

content with an empty something, a formal category, and to eliminate all

assertions of existence. So , for example, if we consider the analyticallynecessary proposition This house includes its roof, its walls, its floors,

and its other parts, we can formalize that proposition replacing all its

material components with the purely formal ones of whole and part.

In this manner we arrive at the purely formal, analytically necessary, a

priori law: Any whole includes its parts.

There can be a relative concretumwhose name includes as part of its

meaning a reference to other relative concreta apart from which the

relative concretum cannot be understood. The propositions articulating

such relationships are also analytically necessary propositions. Forexample, the proposition There cannot be a parent without children

expresses an analytic necessity. Terms such as parent and child have,

as part of their meaning a necessary reference to another object. In such

propositions there is no connection established between two essences; the

notion of child is included in that of parent, and vice versa. The relation

of parent to child, therefore, is analogous to that of whole to part.

The terms color and extension, on the other hand, do not include

a reference to one another as part of their meaning. Nevertheless, by virtue

of its essence color is necessarily and universally, that is, lawfully, related

to extension. Given, however, that color does not as part of its meaning

include a reference to something else, the necessity of the principle A

color cannot exist without some extension that it covers is not analytic.

See also SYNTHETIC A PRIORI LAW.

ANTHROPOLOGISM. Anthropologism is that instance of specific

relativism that claims that truth is relative to the human species, that is,

that what is true is what seems or is taken to be true by human beings byvirtue of their specific make-up. Truth has its source not in the individual

human, as in individual relativism, but in the empirical constitution of the

species. See also PSYCHOLOGISM.

ANTHROPOLOGY. Anthropology is the descriptive science that studies

the human species.

APODICTICITY (Apodikti zi tt). Apodicticity is a property ofevidence, and

one of the types ofabsolute evidence that Husserl identifies. An apodicticevidenc e is indubitable. Apodicticity must be distinguished from both

infallibility and incorrigibility. To say that evidence is apodictic does not

mean that it is impossible for us to be mistaken or that it is impossible that

our insight will be subject to various forms of correction. It means only