Page:Reichenbach - Experience and Prediction.djvu/26

12 MEANING holtz’ and Einstein’s theories of space and time may illustrate this. But the kind of fact maintained here does not belong to the sphere of the objects of science, and so we call it a logical fact. It will be one of our tasks to analyze these logical facts and to determine their logical status; but for the present we shall use the term “logical fact” without further explanation.

The difference between statements and decisions marks a point at which the distinction between the descriptive task and the critical task of epistemology proves of utmost importance. Logical analysis shows us that within the system of science there are certain points regarding which no question as to truth can be raised, but where a decision is to be made; descriptive epistemology tells us what decision is actually in use. Many misunderstandings and false pretensions of epistemology have their origin here. We know the claims of Kantianism, and Neo-Kantianism, to maintain Euclidean geometry as the only possible basis of physics; modern epistemology showed that the problem as it is formulated in Kantianism is falsely constructed, as it involves a decision which Kant did not see. We know the controversies about the “meaning of meaning”; their passionate character is due to the conviction that there is an absolute meaning of meaning which we must discover, whereas the question can only be put with respect to the concept of meaning corresponding to the use of science, or presupposed in certain connections. But we do not want to anticipate the discussion of this problem, and our later treatment of it will contain a more detailed explanation of our distinction between statements and decisions.

The concept of decision leads to a third task with which we must charge epistemology. There are many places where the decisions of science cannot be determined precisely, the words or methods used being too vague; and