Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/171

 Neither of these two philosophies, the skeptical or the dogmatic, really needs to be taken too seriously. The skeptic also believes that he can answer a good many questions, at least in every day life, and he really has no serious intention of denying absolutely everything; and the dogmatist, we may be sure, cannot help but feel certain doubts in his mind and in his heart. He does not really believe that everything can be answered satisfactorily.

Most philosophies, therefore, take their position somewhat between those two extremes. They do not assert that all questions can be answered and they do not believe that no problem can be solved. They all believe that a certain boundary exists between those problems to which we can find the final clues and those for which a solution seems to be forever impossible. The place where they draw the boundary line between that which can be known and that which cannot be known is, as I hinted before, one of the most characteristic traits of different philosophies.

Thus most philosophers believe that there is the knowable and the unknowable, that there are answerable and absolutely unanswerable questions. And this seems to be the attitude not only of philosophers, but of all ordinary people, too. All of us, perhaps, believe that surely some questions can be answered, and that surely there are some questions to which we cannot find any solution.

But there is an important distinction to be made here. In order to see this, let us look at some questions of every day life, of science, of philosophy. I take several instances on different levels. Suppose we should ask, “When will the depression end?” None of us, I expect, knows the answer, but we have no doubt that in some future time the answer will be known. Most of us also believe that if there were some one who really knew all the facts and had the ability of drawing the proper conclusions he would be in a position to answer this question even now. This means that we do not regard such a question as unanswerable. We do not happen to know the answer, but we believe that the finding of it is in no way beyond human possibilities.

Take another question, perhaps a little more complicated. If the historian should ask, “What did Napoleon do on January 2, 1800 at 5:32 in the afternoon?” — it might happen to be known, but probably is not known; it is also possible that no historian as long as the human race exists will ever be able to answer the question definitely. Thus, from a certain