unknowability
Inherent cognitive inaccessibility
Unknowability is the quality of being impossible to know or understand.
Philosophy and theology invoke unknowability when discussing limits of human understanding—the unknowability of God's will, the unknowability of other minds, the unknowability of what happens after death.
The unknowability of the future is what makes life interesting.
Surpassing usual limits
- ineffabilityBeing beyond articulation
- thing-in-itselfReality apart from perception
- absoluteTotal, without qualification
- unconditionedNot learned or taught
Kant · negative theology · divine mystery · ultimate reality · transcendental
Being impossible to grasp
- inscrutabilityImpossible to understand
- unfathomabilityImpossibility of being understood
- impenetrabilityResistance to penetration
- inexplicabilityCannot be accounted for
inconceivability · opacity · inaccessibility · insolubility · imponderability · ineffability · indescribability · obscureness
Lack of fixed outcome
- unpredictabilityState resisting forecasts
- aleatoryGoverned by chance
- stochasticRandomly determined, statistically describable
- randomnessLack of predictable pattern
chance · ambiguity · indefiniteness · incompleteness · Heisenberg · quantum · chaos · contingency
transcendence
Surpassing usual limits
- ineffabilityBeing beyond articulation
- thing-in-itselfReality apart from perception
- absoluteTotal, without qualification
unconditioned · Kant · negative theology · divine mystery · ultimate reality · transcendental
incomprehensibility
Being impossible to grasp
- inscrutabilityImpossible to understand
- unfathomabilityImpossibility of being understood
- impenetrabilityResistance to penetration
inexplicability · inconceivability · opacity · inaccessibility · insolubility · imponderability · ineffability · indescribability · obscureness · abstruseness
indeterminacy
Lack of fixed outcome
- unpredictabilityState resisting forecasts
- aleatoryGoverned by chance
- stochasticRandomly determined, statistically describable
randomness · chance · ambiguity · indefiniteness · incompleteness · Heisenberg · quantum · chaos · contingency · irreducibility
ineffable
Beyond verbal expression
occult · arcane · veiled · hidden · shrouded · mystique · sacred · divine · via negativa · unspeakable
- mysteriousnessenigma, mystique, inscrutability, obscurity, crypticness
- inscrutabilitymystery, enigma, opacity, impenetrability, incomprehensibility
- epistemic limitsignorance, limits, bounds, gaps, blind spots
- obscurityinvisibility, anonymity, concealment, hiddenness, obscurity
- Black Boxesflight recorder, cockpit recorder, cockpit voice recorder, data recorder, voice recorder
unknowabilityknowability
State of being comprehensible
knowableness · comprehensibility · intelligibility · discoverability · fathomability
unknowabilityobviousness
State of being evident
self-evidence · transparency · clarity · manifestness · lucidity
know, knowledge, knowing, unknown, acknowledge, knows, knowingly, knowledgeable, unknowing