• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Why does Knowledge limit us?

really? just because something is infinite and impossible to know dosent mean that its impossible to know its infinite. i get where your coming from tho. i guess im trying to say that you dont have to have infinite knowledge to know its infinite.

we are talking about a quote that comes from dualist thought so its nice to think about the paradox of it, afterall thats the whole point. 8^)
 
Last edited:
knowledge does not limit us

symbolic knowledge does limit us

infinity can be experienced

infinity can not be accurately described

"The Way that can be written is not the true Way." - Lao Tzu

Search online for Dr Noam Chomsky's lectures on symbolic language and the limitations it poses for the human imagination. Even the characters of our alphabet shape the perception of reality for us.
 
Tromps said:
It's true, there might be things we will never know, but why is that?

Is it that humans are not intelligent or as advanced enough to know what 'everything' is? Is it something we could never even understand? Or is it because the mysteries of this universe aren't meant to be known?

I am always asking myself Why? For example, Why is the universe here? Is this a question that can be answered with scientific reasoning or is it a spiritual answer I must fine within myself? This is just one little example, my brain is always asking why to everything. Why am I here? Is there a God? Why don't I know?

My main question though that I would ask to you Bluelighters is, do you think it is possible that our human race could ever know everything? If not, why not? Are the powers and forces of this universe so powerful that perhaps some things just simply can't be known, or that these mysteries of the universe are meant to be unknown by some higher power?

Are we really limited by knowledge? Or is knowledge endless?
Click to expand...
Ive been thinking about this issue a great deal recently, I was thinking... What if maths is invented, not discovered and the only use of maths is to describe events and not uncover truth. For example the first law of newton which works and is still applied and used but has been falsified by Einstein's theories... if you think about it its perfectly possible, mathematics might be able to describe what surrounds us but what if it just describes it? We might not have any knowledge whatsoever, we might not be able to know anything... There is plenty of writing on this topic... I really enjoyed Wittgenstein's Tractatus on this hehe
 
ganja god said:
^Why quote a nazi though? Knowledge is useful to an extent, but the more concepts and words we fill our heads with, the more prejudices and preconceptions fog our vision of direct experiential reality, which can never be articulated or intellectualized.
Click to expand...

Nazi????
 
Vader said:
I'm not sure if we can know anything.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Lately I've been a pretty hardcore philosophical skeptic. I think "knowledge" is basically a figment of our imagination. Knowledge is, at best, a vague and murky analogy to a few crude characteristics of our immediate environment.

Read Descartes' "Meditations". I don't know how it's even possible to finish that essay with a surviving belief in human knowledge... Unless, of course, you buy into his argument for the existence of God.
 
This kind of thinking turns into an obsession. Accepting things the way they are to a certain degree is important. This allows you to move on with everything instead of getting caught up too much.
 
Scientists say we only use around 10% of our brain. My question is why can we only use 10% of it or is there something we can tap into & use more?
 
As far as the question as why we are here & whats our purpose? Well, my question is why do some of suffer & others have everything they could ever want in life to make things great. Why do some people turn to killing & others turn to winning the nobel peace prize.

Are we a product of our environment (which I believe we are) or do we choose our road to success or our demise no matter how we were brought up. Is a serial killer born this way? Or do they choose to be this way as they progress threw life?

So many questions............maybe we shouldnt worry about what others do & just worry about how we live our own life & try to live it to the best of knowledge.
 
Knowledge does indeed limit us. Knowledge is usually present outside of our bodies and minds; we learn about cars, how to be social, school things. The "who, what, where, when, why and hows" of life. This keeps us away from discovering our own unique true nature. The more time we spend on knowledge, typically, the less time we spend on our nature.
 
I think youre born into the person you are. Ultimately, you were going to make all these decisions anyways. The universe sent ur soul into earth on a mission because it wants the exact combination of experiences ur storing... just my personal philosophy.
 
^ In a small way, I agree with what you're saying. As a kid, I always got these feelings of horrendous claustrophobia, but at the same time, it was relaxing and serene when I had these moments. Today, I still get them, but I understand what they are telling me. So perhaps we're born into our world with different talents, and some with knowledge could lack other, more spiritual qualities.
 
I'm trying to approach the original question scientifically...

For example, in mathematics, the Gödel's incompleteness theorem states that there exist mathematical statements that are true but are still impossible to prove. Mathematics is a construct created by ourselves, but according to GIT, we still can't know everything about it. It's even more unlikely that we can know everything about the universe, which was not created by us.
 
polymath said:
I'm trying to approach the original question scientifically...

For example, in mathematics, the Gödel's incompleteness theorem states that there exist mathematical statements that are true but are still impossible to prove. Mathematics is a construct created by ourselves, but according to GIT, we still can't know everything about it. It's even more unlikely that we can know everything about the universe, which was not created by us.
Click to expand...

are you refereeing to the "Cannon" theory, as described in "Godel Escher & Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid"?
if so, doesnt the theory of that book return a lot to "Chaos" and the fractal, along with a rhythm or schematic that is commonly drawn in nature, math, science and art?

IDK, been reading that for ~16 years off and on -
aye... heheh.


now looking around i cant find my copy, but it does seem relative and rarely discussed.
 
^^ I read parts of the Eternal Golden Braid a year ago... I think its a good description of the subject to people who are not mathematicians. My major subject in university is physics... The Gödel's theorem was a great shock to mathematicians when it was first introduced, much like the quantum theory with its indeterministic nature was a shock for the physicists of the time. Before the 20th century it was still believed that it's possible to know everything with help of science...
 
Tromps said:
It's true, there might be things we will never know, but why is that?

Is it that humans are not intelligent or as advanced enough to know what 'everything' is? Is it something we could never even understand? Or is it because the mysteries of this universe aren't meant to be known?

I am always asking myself Why? For example, Why is the universe here? Is this a question that can be answered with scientific reasoning or is it a spiritual answer I must fine within myself? This is just one little example, my brain is always asking why to everything. Why am I here? Is there a God? Why don't I know?

My main question though that I would ask to you Bluelighters is, do you think it is possible that our human race could ever know everything? If not, why not? Are the powers and forces of this universe so powerful that perhaps some things just simply can't be known, or that these mysteries of the universe are meant to be unknown by some higher power?

Are we really limited by knowledge? Or is knowledge endless?
Click to expand...

If 1 brain was to know "everything" or even close... it would know what is going on in all dimensions and all different parallel universes. Quite the amount of info for any 1 human to contain into one brain of normal size
 
TheLostBoys said:
As far as the question as why we are here & whats our purpose? Well, my question is why do some of suffer & others have everything they could ever want in life to make things great. Why do some people turn to killing & others turn to winning the nobel peace prize.

Are we a product of our environment (which I believe we are) or do we choose our road to success or our demise no matter how we were brought up. Is a serial killer born this way? Or do they choose to be this way as they progress threw life?

So many questions............maybe we shouldnt worry about what others do & just worry about how we live our own life & try to live it to the best of knowledge.
Click to expand...

Why not actually TRY to earn a strong stable content feeling in your life, and retain this feeling as long as you can.
while ALSO chillin' back as the world/god/flow takes your life up and/or down. Don't give up
 
Why knowledge limits / why thought is "false"

Perhaps this that I posted on another forum will point to why discursive thought and the psyche are ultimately 'false', only useful as a loose blueprint to get around.

>
>
> you state that as if it were fact.
> so you contend that it the psyche is disolved then karma ends and
> we move through existence in a neutral fashion.
Click to expand...

No -- not neutral.

You have to have positive and negative to compare with, to derive neutrality. Which is why there's actually no worries at all about the dissolution of the positive/negative polarity.

We move through existence the way we move through existence. That is all that can be said, because it's happening now -- it's in the process, and thinking about it is an aspect of the process!

So the more we think we know about the present, the more we are limited by what doesn't exist: The past.

Knowledge is the past (which is not around anywhere), and the present is utterly active. You cannot deal well with a present situation through dead knowledge of/from an absent time. You have to just simply be present and engaged, pay attention and allow what happens to happen naturally. In some quarters, they call it "going with the flow" ;).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top