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My question refers to three kinds of "inaccessible" concepts:

  1. Those "humanly inaccessible" in the sense that we cannot conceive them as humans but that could be thought about with a proper brain structure (or with something other than a brain that enable thoughts) that is realizable within the limitations of our universe.

  2. Those "weakly inaccessible", not strictly inaccessible, those that theoretically could be thought about by something within the constraints of our laws of physics but that will never be conceived no matter what by anything in the universe, even if even us humans if could think them.

  3. Those "strongly inaccessible" in the sense that they couldn't be thought of no matter what due to fundamental limitations caused by the laws of physics, so that no arrangement of matter even theoretical, even involving much more matter than there actually is in the universe, couldn't produce thoughts about them. For instance, if any concept required having a "thinking structure" that is able to perform hypercomputation, it'd be out of reach for anything in our universe on a fundamental level.

Are there names for any of these three kinds? If there are, I would assume the names are different.

And if there are names and there are readings of interest related to the third kind, I'd be interested in reading that.

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  • How can we conceive an "unconcivable" concept?
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 10:09
  • Of course we can't, but I don't pretend otherwise, we can still give this kind of concept a name even if we can't point out to specific ones, and we could probably reflect on the implications of whether or not such concepts exist. The last sentence in my post is just for my curiosity, I don't have a philosophy background.
    – Uro
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 10:14
  • It is more of a curiosity question as a whole for my own sake as I would like to try to think of ways to incorporate such elements in a science-fiction/fantasy setting. Hence why I'd like to be using the proper name for it (if there is one) and reading about it to learn subtleties I could have missed to avoid possible inconsistencies.
    – Uro
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 10:22
  • This sounds like how Chomsky views limits of biology. He identifies mysteries vs problems. Anything biological has limits of what it can conceive, although not necessarily what it can solve brutely without conceiving. Mysteries are those “concepts” forever beyond biological conceiving and problems are conceivable fully. Each species has its own mysteries and problems, and only some mysteries can be turned into problems by careful practice. Humans can interact with mysteries at surface level but never deep understanding. More powerful organisms than us could resolve our mysteries.
    – J Kusin
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 14:06
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    I'd say the term you're looking for is noumenal. Noumenal thought processes are limits; Kant says, for example, that we don't know why space and time are the two forms of our intuition, or why the categories are the twelve forms of our discursion. "Something like space or time or something like the categories" is a description that can be satisfied only by information to which we don't have sufficient access.
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 17:08

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I would argue against the idea of inaccessible concepts.

Concepts should be understood as abstractions that make modelling tractable, often by identifying symmetries, or otherwise dropping unnecessary information. Discussed here: As humans, do we require a total understanding of information to fully embody it as knowledge?

The example of higher dimensions, can help us understand tools for conceiving things we can't directly experience: Is it possible to visualize higher dimensional space?

Then we have to look at whether the human brain is a limit. Modern science involves mega-projects, like the Standard Model of particle physics, or the Lambda-CDM model, resulting from the work of thousands of people, but learnable by one. Increasingly this involves augmenting human brains with computers, as well as through multi-generational networks of cooperation. Crucially, the increase in capacity of networks is far from linear, these impacts are cumulative and adapt to the problems they address.

That doesn't mean there are no limits on what can be conceptualised. Our brains can only hold a certain limit of symbols or representations in working memory, and they are crucial nodes. It may take deeper integration with AI like Neuralink, to go beyond that limit. But it's like a limit of pixels on the resolution of an image, it only impacts models with many layers of fine details which must be seen at once to be understood - currently only biological and social systems have that kind of intensive complexity, so we can reasonably expect biological systems to interact effectively with it.

Fundamentally, what is real we can interact with, what we can interact with we can conceptualise. Discussed here: Can knowledge exist that humans are incapable of understanding?

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  • Among all possible mathematical models that can be said to model something akin to a universe, I can not believe there isn't even a single one in which not only there exist things that can be described as sentient and in which, due to having laws of physics that enable much more complex behaviors (say, hypercomputation) for that universe's equivalent of matter, sentient beings are able to produce unique thoughts that couldn't be thought in our own no matter what. Whether or not such universes actually physically exist and are real does not matter to me: they mathematically could.
    – Uro
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 13:34
  • So even if there are limits on what can be conceptualised in our universe, I do believe there could be things beyond that limit, and even if such concepts had no meaning in ours, what matters to me is whether or not there is a theoretical mathematical model in which there can be arguably sentient beings which can make sense of it. In fact, them having no meaning in ours might probably even be a necessary condition to be unthinkable in our universe.
    – Uro
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 13:38
  • @Uro: Can we interact with those beings, & their universes? If not, ever, by any means, they are not part of our reality. If we can, we can come to share their understanding. But "If something about the mind of a knower means that is impossible, such as them being more advanced technologically than humans but uninterested in communicating, likely full communication may never be established." 'From the post Can knowledge exist that humans are incapable of understanding?' Linked above. This however, means not accessible, but not fundamentally inaccessible
    – CriglCragl
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 15:34
  • I guess the true limit, would relate to the limits of assembling all the matter in our universe into a computation, using the then remaining entropy. But as discussed here, I don't think even that is a limit: 'What will humanity do IF and when technological progression ends?' philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/89770/…
    – CriglCragl
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 15:38
  • We can't interact with them, since they are abstract mathematical objects. I think what I call "strongly inaccessible" is related to what you describe in your last comment, but goes beyond that since it lifts the restriction of having to work with with the "stuff" that actually is in our universe and refers to things that are mathematically thinkable but that couldn't be thought no matter what arrangement of any amount of matter given our laws of physics.
    – Uro
    Commented Mar 27, 2022 at 16:05

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