I always held a strong view that metaphysics has nothing significant to offer than what set theory and logic already has; for the nature of knowledge is such that it doesn’t tell us a thing about the world. Intelligibility is a consequence of comparison; it dictates the direction and the intensity of light that as a consequence generates shadows of objects, which then can be compared. Our world cannot be known, it can only be compared to other possible worlds. What’s strange is that although in practice no human can claim that he has known something, for all that he has done is compare something with something else: he seems to understand what it means to know. How can he take the act of comparison for something that he can never do – namely – know? From whence these intuitions emerge? Are they merely psychological accidents? Wittgenstein posits that what is mystical is what manifests itself – is the meaning of ‘knowing’ one such manifestation? – something that cannot be shown, and if shown cannot be said? It’s crucial to understand these errors because for centuries the human predicament has been to not know anything fully, including what it means to know something. We shall attempt to do it in this essay.

Let us first acquaint ourselves with some rudimentary set theoretic implications. Consider the following: Suppose you have a set that contains everything; it contains all objects or elements and of which all other sets are subsets. In that universal set, consider the set of all sets that do not contain themselves; if that set contains itself, then by definition it doesn’t contain itself, a paradox. Therefore, we cannot have a set of all sets that do not contain themselves. But if there is a universal set, such a set can always be procured by the axiom of comprehension which states that given any condition there exists a set in the universal set whose elements include all the elements in the universal set that satisfy the given condition. So we conclude that a universal set cannot exist, metaphysically speaking. A set must specify common conditions its elements satisfy, only such sets can be said to have sense. ‘Everything’ makes no metaphysical sense, and the word – ‘Nothing’ also faces the same fate. Look, we do have empty sets, but that is always defined keeping in mind a reference. For example – if I am dealing with natural numbers then I would define my empty set to be a set that contains no natural numbers. This so defined empty set can contain half, one-third, one fourth, and so on, but since it does not contain any of the natural numbers, it by definition satisfies to be empty. Emptyset or ‘Nothing’ must always be contingent upon the prototype of elements in a particular context, and whether it contains elements of some other prototype must by default be irrelevant. There is no such thing as ‘absolute nothing’. Nature abhors a vacuum. That’s why the question – ‘Did creation pop out of nothing?’ – seems so abhorrent to us all, for there is always something. Even after death, there is something, it is just that we won’t be alive to witness it the way we witness our existence now. 

Keeping that in mind, when one asks: will we end up knowing nothing? One must specify: nothing of what? The same goes for: will we ever know everything? – everything about what? The answer to these must specify an essential characteristic of objects that classify it completely, for only then can the prototype be rigorous. For instance, one can’t merely assert – ‘everything that exists’ – because in the mathematical world, it would mean anything that is defined; in the physical world, it would mean whose existence can be inferred by the senses; in the world of formal language, it would be the set of all true propositions, and so on. Therefore, the question about the extent of knowledge must clarify knowledge about what, for it can only be of particulars, not universals. Now say the question is: can we know everything about a tree? Or, as Immanuel Kant posed it – Will there be an Issac Newton for a blade of grass? For this, one must understand what it pertains to say to know something.

It is said that Wittgenstein, while in spartan solitude in Norway, working on what he thought would be the final book on philosophy, put forth to himself a question – How do we communicate with each other? The question he posed had been simmering within him since he had heard of a court case in Paris; wherein the court had ordered to recreate an accident that happened on a road junction to study the case in greater detail. For Wittgenstein, that was gold. He proposed that people create pictures of facts. To whatever extent a picture resembles reality, to that extent, it communicates the sense of its world. We don’t have an organ for ‘knowing’. We have the means to see, hear, feel, taste, think, and to remain conscious while our thoughts juggle the sensory information. We know the world in our making of its representations. There is no end to ‘the making’, for ‘making’ is ‘knowing’. Others don’t communicate pictures, they communicate facts, and we make our own pictures of that fact. Thus, our understanding is but pictures of pictures of pictures. 

Now, consider the following question: if you have to explain something to me, I can understand that only by making a picture of your picture. If so, how does one determine who among us understands something better? We both have pictures of the same fact. I can’t telepathically transport that to you, nor can you to me. We can compare our pictures to see what resembles reality better, but to compare, we must first communicate. But once we communicate, we are no more comparing our pictures, for we would be comparing my picture of your picture and your picture of my picture, and soon enough we would be comparing your picture of my picture of your picture with my picture of your picture of my picture; so on till a point where we would ourselves not know what we had been talking about. No wonder miscommunication is still prevalent in our societies even after centuries of linguistic advancement. 

Let us summarise the points made so far: (a) knowledge can only be of particulars, not universals, (b) the content of knowledge are representations of the objects studied (i.e. the pictures we make), and (c) comprehending knowledge is an act of making pictures of pictures. First, there is a recognition of a particular thing to be known, followed by an effort to find an appropriate model for it, which is then communicated to the ones’ interested in the community. Recognition of a particular thing is essentially due to the asymmetry in the world. We infer that the sun lights up our planet and not any other star by reading into the asymmetry, which in this case happens to be the distance to our planet. If there is a world where for any event the objects that could cause it are all perfectly symmetrical, including the objects that bear the effects, then there shall be no need for The Law of Causality, for there would be no reason for any event to be caused by one than the other. Anyhow, our universe is stupendously asymmetrical, as a result there is scope for recognition, hence scope for knowledge.

Let us now circle back and address the misunderstanding discussed in the beginning. Take for instance, the knowledge of you being content with whatever little life has to offer. You simply know that you’re satisfied, blissed out, and if someone holds a gun in your face forcing you to explain yourself, then perhaps you would end up communicating few reasons, but the truth of it is – your contentment is independent of the petty reasons you’d cook up to explain the beauty off. What others expect of you, how your life had been, how the world treated you, would be immaterial, for there is something in you that seems to know that you’ve got what you need, you’ve got what it takes, and that knowing is not of anything particular. That sort of knowledge requires no external act to derive its contents. No representations. You simply know. Can that form of knowing be expected for external things? Can you know that the sun will rise tomorrow just like you would know that you are content? – with absolute conviction, to a point that communicating it would be redundant. Your knowing would strike to you as being blatantly universal. A triviality. Something that can only be confused with words. I must stop here before I degenerate into the mystical. Apologies for leaving this open-ended!