It seems to me, off-hand, this Quine's discussion has some bearing on John Horgan's concerns about the end of science. It may also have some bearing on the notion of superintelligent machines. After all, presumably those machines can do things that humans cannot. Could they know things that we cannot?
After a fair amount of discussion, Quine concludes (c. 25:00):
Questions, let us remember, are in language. Language is learned by people from people only in relation ultimately to observable circumstances of utterance. The relation of language to observation is often very devious, but observation is finally all there is for language to be anchored to. If a question could, in principle, never be answered, then one feels that language has gone wrong. Language has parted its mooring and the question has no meaning.
On this philosophy, of course, our question has a sweeping answer. The question was whether there are things man could never know. The question was whether there are questions, meaningful questions, that man could in principle never answer. On this philosophy the answer to this question of questions is no.
That's the end of Quine's remarks. The rest of the video is given over to an interview with an anthropologist.
H/t 3 Quarks Daily.
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