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PARTISAN REVIEW
scientific development had no bearing on the mind-body problem.
A similar dilemma has been posed already by Rhine's experiments
and investigations of paranonnal phenomena, which some believe
increase the probability of consciousness surviving bodily disintegra–
tion. In order to get past these two obstacles, we would have to re–
define philosophy in such a way that, no matter what scientific
knowledge disclosed about the world, our philosophical beliefs would
not be affected; those beliefs would have to be valid for all possible,
indeed,
all
imaginable worlds. It would then be necessary to show
in what way these philosophical beliefs differed from purely logical
statements, since they would be valid for worlds with the most
contrary properties.
Now it
is
clear that many of the statements defended in the
past as instances of "philosophical knowledge"-for example, that
our physical space must be infinite or Euclidean, or that species are
fixed and unalterable-have turned out to be incompatible with
scientific knowledge. Therefore such statements must be considered
false and can be dismissed as not knowledge at all. The history of
the relation between what has been called philosophical knowledge
and scientific knowledge suggests three general observations:
(a) We cannot know what does not make sense. We cannot
have knowledge of the harmony of the spheres or the virtue of
triangles if spheres are things that cannot be in harmony or dis–
harmony and if "triangle" means what it means in Euclid. We can–
not have knowledge about anything that has no intelligible opposite
even though we disguise this fact from ourselves by speaking of
analogical knowledge. We have no knowledge of "Being."
(b) We cannot know what isn't so.
1£
there are no leprechauns
or elves such as we read about in fairy tales, we cannot have knowl–
edge of them even though we are able to describe the properties
their behavior would exhibit if they did exist. Similarly, if there are
no angels we cannot have knowledge of them; what
is
called knowl–
edge of the angelic hierarchy
is
knowledge only of the classificatory
scheme of them as set forth in a certain book or tradition, just as
knowledge pf the hierarchy of Olympian deities
is
not knowledge
of any divine creatures, discovered or inferred, but only of what is
contained in the works of Homer and other writers. (Actually, there
