Uncertainty and the Unimaginable

Abstract

How much can we “know”? In this essay, I sketch one stance on this question that, broadly speaking, posits that the resources of the human mind have some insurmountable limits, and that, as a result, the right answers to hard questions that we are perpetually uncertain about are literally unknowable and unimaginable. I critique this stance on conceptual, ethical, and empirical grounds but frame no alternative hypothesis.