Page:Reichenbach - Experience and Prediction.djvu/30

16 MEANING forming the advisory task of epistemology into the critical task. We may state the connection in the form of an implication: If you choose this decision, then you are obliged to agree to this statement, or to this other decision. This implication, taken as a whole, is free from volitional elements; it is the form in which the objective part of knowledge finds its expression. §2. Language

It may be questioned if every process of thinking needs language. It is true that most conscious thinking is bound to the language form, although perhaps in a more or less loose way: the laws of style are suspended, and incomplete groups of words are frequently used instead of whole propositions. But there are other types of thought of a more intuitive character which possibly do not contain psychological elements which can be regarded as constituting a language. This is a question which psychologists have not yet brought to a definite solution.

What cannot be questioned, however, is that this is the concern of psychology only and not of epistemology. We pointed out that it is not thinking in its actuality which constitutes the subject matter of epistemology but that it is the rational reconstruction of knowledge which is considered by epistemology. And rationally reconstructed knowledge can only be given in the language form—that needs no further explanation, since it may be taken as a part of the definition of what we call rational reconstruction. So we are entitled to limit ourselves to symbolized thinking, i.e., to thinking formulated in language, when we begin with the analysis of knowledge. If anyone should raise the objection that we leave out by this procedure certain parts of thinking which do not appear in the language form, the objection would betray a misunderstanding of