Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/203

 9. Why is content inexpressible? I can imagine that beginners in philosophy (but, when we come to think of it, can anyone really be more than a beginner in philosophy?) may still entertain doubts in regard to our assertions, and it would be natural for them to ask: "You are making very categorical statements, but must they really be true ? How do you know that content might not be expressed after all, if one went about it in the right way? Why could not some means of doing it be discovered in the future? Even if it is impossible for human beings, could it not be achieved by beings of higher intellectual powers? Perhaps it is all a mistake, and a better philosopher might give us a different conviction? So where is your final proof?"

I answer that no proof is needed, because I have not asserted anything which can be believed or doubted. Our "assertion" of the inexpressibility of Content is a mere truism, it may be regarded as a tautology; and a tautology, properly speaking, does not assert anything. It does not impart any knowledge. As a matter of fact, I am not claiming to convey any knowledge to you when I say that content cannot be expressed, I am only trying to agree with you on the way in which we use our terms, especially the questionable word "content" itself. It is, if you like to put it that way, a matter of definition. Inexpressibility is not an accidental property of content which to our surprise we discover it to possess after we have been acquainted with it for some time, but we cannot get acquainted with it at all without knowing that this property belongs to its very nature. All the insight we have gained thus far we have gained by simply considering carefully what we mean when we use the term "expression". Expression implies two facts: one that expresses and one that is being expressed. The former is a sort of picture of the latter, it repeats its structure in a different material. A picture must differ from the original in some way otherwise it would not be a picture at all, but simply the original itself, or perhaps an exact duplicate of it. Now there are cases in which the picture serves as a substitute for the original, we should prefer to have the original, but because for some reason or other it is unattainable, we have to be satisfied with a picture (as a lover who kisses the picture of his sweetheart during her absence); but there are also other cases where we do not care for the original at all — it may even be in our possession —, but where we want the