Quantitative Epistemology

Abstract

This chapter follows Mario Bunge’s unswerving dedication to the idea that philosophical deliberations should be precise in formulation and cogent in substantiation. In deliberating about the range of human knowledge from a quantitative point of view it emerges that three very different ranges of consideration have to be addressed. The range of what we human individuals can actually and overtly know is bound to consist of a finite number of items. And given the recursive nature of language the range of what is knowable—i.e. propositionally formulated truth—is at most denumerably infinite. But the range of what is theoretically knowable—the manifold of actual facts—is going to be transdenumerably large, if only due to the role of real-valued parameters. A proper heed to this quantitative disparity has interesting implications for the status of our knowledge in a world where we must deal with digital conceptualization of an analogue reality.