Mark asked:

I've a feeling that what I'm trying to say is very simple, but I can't find a good way to express it.
Perhaps you can help me figure out what I'm toying with here: If we call "Universe" the ultimate set of
everything, from which nothing that exists is excluded (a common usage of "universe", I think) then
we cannot imagine (posit, conceptualize, propose) any universe but this one — just as it is —
because any imagined "other universe" becomes immediately a part of this one.

This scenario requires that we grant existence to ideas. (An uncontroversial claim, it seems to me, for
while ideas do not exist in the same way that chairs exist, as existent things they are no less evident.)

Finally, a question (maybe): If we don't know what something is, can we nonetheless propose it?

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Well you seem to have expressed it just fine. Ok, now what? You've defined the word "universe" in a
particular way, and certain things follow from that definition. Yes, and...? Does this relate to the real
world? How do you know?

The problem with your question is that it's not posed well. What do you mean by that little slippery
word "is"? I don't know what an electron is, but I can talk about it, and even propose it because I know
someof its properties. Are you asking whether you have to know something, no matter what, about
something before you can talk about it? I would say yes, offhand. I suppose you could just say,
"there's something which might be called a 'knuuxy', but I don't know anything at all about it beside
that, and I'm not even sure of that." But you've just used "knuuxy" as a noun, and so we think, by that
usage, that it's a thing, rather than a modifier, like "quick", for example. So we know something about
it, and thus we know what it "is", to some extent. But since I don't know what you mean by "is", I don't
know if I've answered your question.

Steven Ravett Brown

Of course! Beginning with the fundamentals, Socrates said "I know nothing" after this nothing is
certain. To move forward as a society we have to make conclusions based on probability of truth
rather than absolute truth itself. So what we do is create theories based on perceived knowledge that
are in an ever changing state. When new information comes to contradict the old theory we reanalyze
the theory and submit it again. This is considered a sort of microevolution of our species. Without
accepting things as a 100 per cent truth there would be no way to move forward at all because we
could never come to a conclusion without absolute truth. So in short, you can propose anything, but
proving it is where its veracity come into question.

Ryan Burton

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