beginning of their existence, humans have tried to increase their understanding of the universe around them. As civilization progressed, the nation with the most scholars and intelligent citizens tended to flourish. It can be argued that if the trend of learning more and more advanced concepts continues, then at some point humans must know everything there is. However, this idea is false because the universe is constantly expanding, human understanding is limited to the capacity of the brain, and numerous problems exist with the human idea of knowledge itself. In the beginning, only very basic concepts existed for the human: finding food, sleep, and shelter. As people learned to broaden their horizons and use the worlds resources, then new concepts of weaponry, establishing kingdoms, and creating a successful economy became important issues. The paradox of discovery is that every door of knowledge opened leads to a room full of new doors and discoveries to be made. In fact, J.R. Primack argues that the entire human civilization can only know 4% of everything in the universe; the other 96% consists of either dark matter (gravity shows that more mass exists than we can see) or dark energy (the apparent fuel for the increasing expansion rate of the universe) that humans cannot fully comprehend. Furthermore, because of the sheer size of the universe, over 99% of its contents
are invisible to humans at any one point in time (Primack 9). If this is true, then there is no way for all the data in the expanding universe to be stored and it is and will forever be impossible for humans to know everything. Of the 4% of the universe that is not dark matter or dark energy, then how much does society really comprehend? Thomas Nagel would say humans comprehend very little outside their own ideas. In his article What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, he discusses how effective humans are at extrapolation, inferring what something is like based on data, using the example of bats. Bats tend to hang upside-down, fly around at night, eat bugs, and use a sonar system to perceive the world around them. People can certainly speculate what it is like to think and act like a bat, but there is no way to prove their theories. Certainly a human can hang upside-down, use a jetpack to fly around, eat bugs, and use an artificial sonar system to see the world around them, but this does not make one a bat; this is merely what it would be like for a human to act like a bat. To learn what it is like for a bat to be a bat, humans would have to have the brain and body of a bat. Because of how humans minds are structured, it is impossible to understand exactly how many things exist. Similarly, the failure of extrapolation means it is impossible for a person with 20-20 vision to know exactly what it would be like to be blind. Certainly the person with good vision can close his or her eyes for extended periods of time, but this is just his or her idea of what it would be like to be blind. Many people reference this phenomenon when they say: You just wouldnt understand. The audience believes they can understand, however, they have not had the same experiences and it is impossible to for them to perfectly understand the situation. Because of this concept of extrapolation, humans cannot begin to grasp precisely how a bats, or any other foreign species for that matter, cognition process works. Therefore, definite limits as to what humans can and cannot know must exist.
So if humans cannot even understand what it is like to be a simple bat, then truly understanding the far more complex human mind may never happen. People can certainly speculate, but the human mind was built to only comprehend the universe from the biased viewpoint of the human mind. The question must then be asked: What exactly is the viewpoint of the human mind? While society has received many answers to this question, it has never been able to reduce the answer to a simple explanation. The answer lies within the scope of philosophy of mind. One must first define what phenomenology of the mind is by asking: What causes consciousness and cognition? Society rushed to the conclusion that brain states cause cognition and consciousness. Tests have been performed to determine the neurology of the brain, but these tests cannot explain how the mind works. Yes, certain synapses in the brain fire during a thought process and specific nerves seem to store memories; however, this still does not explain exactly how the mind is thinking. If brain functions are only described objectively, the mind is not well represented. If the cognition process is only described subjectively, the brain is not well represented. This leads to an impossible explanation of the mind because one cannot have two view points at the same time. Certainly one can alternate between objectivity and subjectivity, but to have both at the same moment, which is necessary to figure out how the mind works, may never happen. Due to the framework of the human mind, everything we learn cannot be proved as true knowledge; instead, it is the human interpretation of knowledge. Immanuel Kant literally brings this subject to light using the concept of color. Color itself does not exist, however the brain interprets different wavelengths of light as different colors. On the bright side, color has greatly helped people to distinguish things such as friend from foe in environments like dense jungles. Kant also brings up how humans see the world. For example, the text you are reading here may
not be the actual image, or phenomena, that exists. Instead, you see the noumena, or the brain signals that lead to the minds interpretation of what this text should look like. The brain will naturally interpret information in the way that makes the most sense, but not necessarily what actually is going on. Take the phrase tihs setnece has tnos of ltetres jmulbed up, but the mnid is itneprrteing it as if it alctauly mdae snese. In reality, that sentence is a bunch of random letters put together; however, your brain pieced together information to turn it into a coherent sentence. Whether we realize it or not, this same thing is happening with everything else the human mind perceives. However, if no abstract knowledge can be established, then what are all these facts floating around? Just in the past 100 years giant leaps scientific progress has been made. Take our understanding of physics, for example. Through constant discoveries, humans have replaced old knowledge of Newtonian physics with the seemingly more accurate theories of relativity and quantum physics. All facts, then, must be scientific theories that explain concepts of the world around us in the context of human interpretation of current knowledge until proven wrong. If all facts are only theories, then no knowledge in the world is truly concrete. This is where pragmatism comes in. The theory of pragmatism claims that truth is malleable and only soft fact can be found. According to pragmatism, people should work, create theories concerning their work, and apply their theories back into their work to improve performance. This theory allows for society to continually discover new information and adapt its ways to improve regardless of how close it is to actual truth. As the philosopher John Turner says, virtually all our mankinds current knowledge is is seen to have been based upon an error, but has been refined and corrected over time (Turner 162). A current idea or theory, therefore, is only the truth until proven false.
Nevertheless, data we have currently may still be wildly inaccurate, such as believing one can know what it is like to be a bat. The paradox of pragmatism is that we must accept all theories as truth, but all secular truth consists of theories. It would seem that the majority of the world has unknowingly accepted pragmatism to be the best way to understand life. However, pragmatism is not a perfect theory. In Communication and Comprehension of Scientific Knowledge, Robert Oppenheimer points out how all new knowledge is related back to and synthesized with previous knowledge. While this pragmatic idea may appear to create a more complete understanding, relating new concepts to old ones is detrimental to the process of learning; by doing so, it becomes easy to miss concepts in a new idea that are unrelated to old ideas and discourages creative thinking. Some of the most intelligent ideas in history, such as Galileos idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe, have come from trying something completely new and ignoring all old ideas. William Kneale discusses another flaw in the human interpretation of knowledge: The expectation of something does not mean it will happen. Most people have, at some point in their life, had a chair pulled back and fell down when they believed they were about to sit down on a chair. The expectation of a chair being there led to a result entirely not expected. Similarly, human ideas and theories may at any point in time go wrong just because they were assumed to be correct in every case. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that true knowledge spawns from philosophers thinking critically about an issue. The most well-known idea of truth, the undeniable existence of self, or Cogito Ergo Sum, seems to have come from philosophy. To determine if this is real
abstract truth or just human interpretation and wishful thinking, the nature of philosophy itself must be brought into question. Betrand Russell explains the nature of philosophy very well: Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conceptions of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good. (Turner 163). According to this definition of philosophy, it cannot provide universal truth. Instead, philosophy exists to broaden the horizons of the human mind. This idea of the nature of philosophy falls in place with the previously mentioned ideas of pragmatism and human interpretation and therefore must have some merit. So far it has been established that humans do not know any of the small fraction of universal truth they can comprehend and thereby must rely on the human mind to come up with and refine theories that appear to be true. The human mind cannot fully understand the mind of a bat, let alone the much more complex universe around it. However, there are actually concepts that the human mind can comprehend without fully understanding them. For example, one could place a healthy caterpillar in the process of metamorphosis inside a secure safe and lock the door. If the safe was opened a few weeks later, a butterfly would be in place of the caterpillar. While it may be unclear exactly how the butterfly in the safe came to be, it can be nonetheless assumed that the caterpillar has been replaced by the butterfly. This scientific concept of biological
development, therefore, can be understood at the basic level without delving into the mind of the caterpillar. If such is the case with a small insect, then certainly many more ideas can be known through science and reasoning without learning precisely how the mind works. It is clear that there are an immense amount of things in the universe humans do not currently know, cannot ever know, and a very limited amount of things humans can assume to be true. To simplify this statement, I will write a math equation.
Despite constant discoveries, human knowledge compared to the expansion of the universe and the constant influx of its mysteries will not ever lead to a full understanding. However, the human mind doesnt necessarily have to approach the entire universe. If the human mind instead only approaches one concept, a different result would occur.
Interestingly enough, while the human mind will never know everything about an idea or fully comprehend it, both pragmatism and extrapolation support the idea that the mind will get closer and closer to a complete understanding. To have the human mind approach both the entire universes truth and one idea would be like multiplying the two equations, but to multiply zero by infinity in math leads to an indeterminate form. In order to come to a conclusion on the limits of knowledge, the rate of change of the human mind must come into play. While no speculations on this have been made by leading philosophers, I argue that the mind is not advancing nearly fast enough to understand everything. Certainly society will continue to progress, but relative to the entire universe humans are just not able to keep up and will know less and less of the universes absolute truth. However, if through some miracle or aid from an omniscient source a
human mind was able to significantly speed up its thought process, it would at some point catch up with the vast expanse of universal knowledge out there.
Works Cited Kneale, William. Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits. By Bertrand Russell. 231st ed. Vol. 58. N.p.: Oxford UP, n.d. 369-78. Print. Mind, New Ser. Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Cambridge [Eng.: Cambridge UP., 1974. Print. Oppenheimer, Robert. Communication and Comprehension of Scientific Knowledge. 3596 ed. Vol. 142. N.p.: Science, 1963. 1143-146. Print. New Ser. Primack, J. R., and Nancy Ellen Abrams. The View from the Center of the Universe : Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos. New York: Riverhead, 2006. Print. Turner, John P. The Problems of Philosphy. By Bertrand Russell. 6th ed. Vol. 10. N.p.: Journal of Philosophy, n.d. 161-65. Print. Psychology and Scientific Methods. Want, Christopher, Andrzej Klimowski, and Richard Appignanesi. Kant for Beginners. Trumpington: Icon, 1996. Print.