Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/409

 could be nothing but the description of a method of discovering which of the suggested answers is the true one. In other words, by giving a meaning to the question he has at the same time made it logically answerable, although he may not be able to make it empirically soluble. Without such an explanation, however, the words "What is the nature of time?" are no question at all. If a philosopher confronts us with a series of words like this and neglects to explain the meaning, he cannot Wonder if no answer is forth-coming. It is as if he had asked us: "How much does philosophy weigh?" in which case it is immediately seen that this is not a question at all, but mere nonsense. Questions like "Can we know the Absolute?" and innumerable similar ones must be dealt with in the same way as the "problem" concerning the nature of Time.

All great philosophical issues that have been discussed since the time of Parmenides to our present day are of one of two kinds; we can either give them a definite meaning by careful and accurate explanations and definitions, and then we are sure that they are soluble in principle, although they may give the scientist the greatest trouble and may even never be solved on account of unfavourable empirical circumstances, or we fail to give them any meaning, and then they are no questions at all. Neither case need cause uneasiness for the philosopher. His greatest troubles arose from a failure to distinguish between the two.