So we have three arguments - moral, practical and innate. Wonder what would happen if they walked into a bar.
The innate argument is interesting. If I understand it correctly, the nature of our existence is limited which puts a constraint on the knowledge we are able to gain. This constraint is short of 'true and full' knowledge and creates an innate level of unknowability for an individual. As a proposition this seems sound. But what about the collective, which is neither limited in space or time?
As a collective, our journey continues and as it does knowledge accumulates. Eventually it also spreads. Is it imaginable that at some time into the future that true and full knowledge may be possible? Could it be that, as it stands today, we are really like children in a car asking "are we there yet"? Perhaps using an 'end of time' scenario might help explain the full range of constraints to knowledge, which I feel you have your disposal.
I will leave aside the question of whether denying absolutely can be consistent with a stance of epistemic humility.
Very interesting question about the collective. There is a mathematical point that even the largest collective of humans is limited in space and time: the gap between infinity and a huge number is still infinity. However, I would argue there are inherent constraints to human knowledge as we cannot fully transcend how we perceive the world. For example, it isn't clear in physics why time isn't reversible, but we cannot perceive things in any other way.
I will take up your challenge and consider your 'end of time' scenario (or thought experiment) in a longer post. I'll have to think it through a bit more and there are a couple of other posts I'll need to write first.
Hmmm. Must confess, I didn't assume existence was infinite. Not sure why. Reversibility of time is another matter entirely. Reminds meL i should nip iff and watch a few Dr Who re-runs.
Thanks for creating the opportunity for us to get some thoughts together!
I am curious about the limits of rationality and explanation. Knowledge is difficult. Yet, I read and was told many years ago about the huge vocabulary of names known to traditional forest dwelling people in both Africa and S.America; memorised names that could call to mind the images of plants and animals and their associated categorisations. Verifiable knowledge, inhabited as it might be in the human mind can seem genuine enough.
Then I turn to the unknown. I was lucky in my rather odd scientific career to have a latter phase when I needed to visit a range of good researchers and ask them about their work. This task was necessarily mutually participatory. Inevitably, the point that was the focus for most of them, was what they 'did not know'. I formed a mental picture of all these little frontiers as expanding bubbles, an ever increasing surface area with the 'unknown', despite the many questions that might be 'satisfactorily' or provisionally explained at any one time.
I also wonder at the 'big science picture' and the logical procedures perhaps best exemplified by maths that can extrapolate from observation. This has led it seems to some very odd places and conundrums. Famously the nature of the Universe appears currently unverifiable. It can only be an assumption that methodology will sometime resolve the maths and find the verifying observations.
To put a tin lid on it (smile) Alasdair MacIntyre's 'Independent Rational Animals' comes to mind. Perhaps a great deal more than we realise we rely for our understanding on our animal nature and the legacy of that inheritance. We might then contemplate entering the mysterious world of intuition and instinct.
Thanks. Your image of bubbles with an increasingly large contact with the 'unknown' is a nice one. Although I do wonder how much our knowledge is always expanding and when it contracts.
My thanks. My point about the 'knowledge bubbles' was that it was the 'unknown' that was growing, perhaps exponentially. Where this leads in history I do not know, but I guess as a civilisation much of what we take at this point as scientific knowledge-gain will be lost. Text books will stand essentially empty, unverifiable.
These were 'good' researchers by and large capable of recording real enough observations. They could not afford to call these 'knowledge'. This was not the mush of post-modern (?) opinion. Good rhetoric if anything sharpened the boundary with the unknown. Aside from interest in their actual research, we were doing risk assessments of biological hazards. These front-line people were often good at recognising hazard, and risk, which always had a strong element of 'unknown'. Some were too narrow. There could not do risk assessment because, quote 'they did not know enough'. Their concept of knowledge seemed to require a level of scientific proof which could never be available (positivists?).
So in my experience we need an 'aesthetic' to cope with what we do not know, whether it is scientific or moral value - some compass of 'truth'. Also in my experience there is always the commonplace of error, needing that means of 'seeing' the picture, an 'aesthetic' however fleeting.
So we have three arguments - moral, practical and innate. Wonder what would happen if they walked into a bar.
The innate argument is interesting. If I understand it correctly, the nature of our existence is limited which puts a constraint on the knowledge we are able to gain. This constraint is short of 'true and full' knowledge and creates an innate level of unknowability for an individual. As a proposition this seems sound. But what about the collective, which is neither limited in space or time?
As a collective, our journey continues and as it does knowledge accumulates. Eventually it also spreads. Is it imaginable that at some time into the future that true and full knowledge may be possible? Could it be that, as it stands today, we are really like children in a car asking "are we there yet"? Perhaps using an 'end of time' scenario might help explain the full range of constraints to knowledge, which I feel you have your disposal.
I will leave aside the question of whether denying absolutely can be consistent with a stance of epistemic humility.
Very interesting question about the collective. There is a mathematical point that even the largest collective of humans is limited in space and time: the gap between infinity and a huge number is still infinity. However, I would argue there are inherent constraints to human knowledge as we cannot fully transcend how we perceive the world. For example, it isn't clear in physics why time isn't reversible, but we cannot perceive things in any other way.
I will take up your challenge and consider your 'end of time' scenario (or thought experiment) in a longer post. I'll have to think it through a bit more and there are a couple of other posts I'll need to write first.
Hmmm. Must confess, I didn't assume existence was infinite. Not sure why. Reversibility of time is another matter entirely. Reminds meL i should nip iff and watch a few Dr Who re-runs.
Thanks for creating the opportunity for us to get some thoughts together!
I am curious about the limits of rationality and explanation. Knowledge is difficult. Yet, I read and was told many years ago about the huge vocabulary of names known to traditional forest dwelling people in both Africa and S.America; memorised names that could call to mind the images of plants and animals and their associated categorisations. Verifiable knowledge, inhabited as it might be in the human mind can seem genuine enough.
Then I turn to the unknown. I was lucky in my rather odd scientific career to have a latter phase when I needed to visit a range of good researchers and ask them about their work. This task was necessarily mutually participatory. Inevitably, the point that was the focus for most of them, was what they 'did not know'. I formed a mental picture of all these little frontiers as expanding bubbles, an ever increasing surface area with the 'unknown', despite the many questions that might be 'satisfactorily' or provisionally explained at any one time.
I also wonder at the 'big science picture' and the logical procedures perhaps best exemplified by maths that can extrapolate from observation. This has led it seems to some very odd places and conundrums. Famously the nature of the Universe appears currently unverifiable. It can only be an assumption that methodology will sometime resolve the maths and find the verifying observations.
To put a tin lid on it (smile) Alasdair MacIntyre's 'Independent Rational Animals' comes to mind. Perhaps a great deal more than we realise we rely for our understanding on our animal nature and the legacy of that inheritance. We might then contemplate entering the mysterious world of intuition and instinct.
Like knowledge, 'beauty is difficult'. Keats to my mind opened up some interesting thoughts on uncertainty, humility, and the "the wreath'd trellis of a working brain" and I found this interesting short essay just now. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability
Your thesis has my support.
Thanks. Your image of bubbles with an increasingly large contact with the 'unknown' is a nice one. Although I do wonder how much our knowledge is always expanding and when it contracts.
Taking your point about beauty being difficult, my reaction was that it might make sense for someone to start writing about aesthetic humility, but I see it has entered academic philosophy: https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mind/fzac010/6586700
My thanks. My point about the 'knowledge bubbles' was that it was the 'unknown' that was growing, perhaps exponentially. Where this leads in history I do not know, but I guess as a civilisation much of what we take at this point as scientific knowledge-gain will be lost. Text books will stand essentially empty, unverifiable.
These were 'good' researchers by and large capable of recording real enough observations. They could not afford to call these 'knowledge'. This was not the mush of post-modern (?) opinion. Good rhetoric if anything sharpened the boundary with the unknown. Aside from interest in their actual research, we were doing risk assessments of biological hazards. These front-line people were often good at recognising hazard, and risk, which always had a strong element of 'unknown'. Some were too narrow. There could not do risk assessment because, quote 'they did not know enough'. Their concept of knowledge seemed to require a level of scientific proof which could never be available (positivists?).
So in my experience we need an 'aesthetic' to cope with what we do not know, whether it is scientific or moral value - some compass of 'truth'. Also in my experience there is always the commonplace of error, needing that means of 'seeing' the picture, an 'aesthetic' however fleeting.
I will have a look at your link. Thanks again.
Sorry... 'They could not...' typo 'There'