Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/400

 they will go on in their courses after mankind has vanished from the earth. Experience shows no connection between the two kinds of events. We observe that the course of the stars is no more changed by the death of human beings than, say, by the eruption of a volcano, or by a change of government in China. Why should we suppose that there would be any difference if all living beings on our planet, or indeed everywhere in the universe, were extinguished? There can be no doubt that on the strength of empirical evidence the existence of living beings is no necessary condition for the existence of the rest of the world.

The question 'Will the world go on existing after I am dead?' has no meaning unless it is interpreted as asking 'Does the existence of the stars etc.

depend upon the life or death of a human being?', and this question is answered in the negative by experience. The mistake of the solipsist or idealist consists in rejecting this empirical interpretation and looking for some metaphysical issue behind it; but all their efforts to construct a new sense of the question end only in depriving it of its old one.

It will be noticed that I have taken the liberty of substituting the phrase 'if all living beings disappeared from the universe' for the phrase 'if all minds disappeared from the universe'. I hope it will not be thought that I have changed the meaning of the issue by this substitution. I have avoided the word 'mind' because I take it to signify the same as the Words 'ego' or 'consciousness', which we have found to be so dark and dangerous. By living beings I meant beings capable of perception, and the concept of perception had been defined only by reference to living bodies, to physical organs. Thus I was justified in substituting 'death of living beings' for 'disappearance of minds'. But the arguments hold for any empirical definition one may choose to give for 'mind'. I need only point out that, according to experience, the motion of the stars etc. is quite independent of all 'mental' phenomena such as feeling joy or sorrow, meditating, dreaming, etc.; and we may infer that the course of the stars would not be affected if those phenomena should cease to exist.

But is it true that this inference could be verified by experience? Empirically it seems to be impossible, but we know that only logical possibility of verification is required. And verification without a 'mind' is logically possible on account of the 'neutral', impersonal character of