Talk:A Lecture on the Limits of Human Knowledge

This particular question "The limits of human knowledge" is of particular interest to me. It seems that this limit, however we may propose to see its horizons, is the first question to be investigated in any philosophical discussion at all. In most discussions of almost anything (and certainly philosophy) there are (sometimes trivial, sometimes major) efforts to establish a priori propositions on which to base further abstractions and their implications. The primary method used seems to be to find historical precedents that rely on some form of linguistic logic that supports our view or to show the weaknesses or flaws in conflicting views (or both). Included in this process is the idea that language or any symbolic representation of experience (without qualification) has some a priori basis on which we can depend. These methodologies are at the same time valuable (perhaps all we have) and notoriously unreliable, otherwise philosophy and other interpretations of human experience would have exhausted themselves thousands of years ago.

The true limits of knowledge would seem to be based on the limits and reliability of perception and the helpfulness and potential for transmission of any interpretation we might come up with. The expectation of delivering some absolute "knowledge" based on some insight into what is ultimately true seems naïve and a poor use of ones time...

It should be noted that there are some Mathematicians that would disagree with this assessment and want to say (from an ontological point of view) that the nature of experience is mathematical regardless of the limits or failures of perception, and that there is a correspondence or correlation between the possible mathematical abstractions of the mind and its perceptual interpretations whether they are seen or not. The conceptual entanglements necessary to consider this will need to be explored by those so inclined...lots of luck. Wildwilliam (discuss • contribs) 21:05, 31 December 2013 (UTC)