Published on September 23, 2025 2:31 PM GMT
Humans may be in a state of total confusion as to the fundamentalmakeup of the cosmos and its rules, to the point where even extremelybasic concepts would need to be revised for accurate understanding.
epistemic status: Philosophy
Content Warning: Philosophy
Attention conservation notice: Philosophy
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamtof in your philosophy
—William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” I.5:159–167, 1600
I want to describe a philosophical stance and/or position that couldbe called "ontological cluelessness".
Definition
Ontological cluelessness is a state of knowledge that humans couldbe in, in which they haven't yet discovered the correct basic categoriesand frameworks for making sense of the cosmos[1] in whichthey find themselves.
That is, humans currently use some basic frameworks for making senseof the cosmos, which include several branches and flavours of science,mathematics, many religions, and many philosophical frameworks; theyalso use many basic categories like the notion of a physical law,consciousness, matter, God, substance, Being, moral facts, logicalentailment, stories & myths, and so on.
These frameworks and categories may be utterly inadequate for makingsense of the cosmos humans find themselves in, and instead representa local maximum in the space of conceptual apparatūs that could beused to make sense of the cosmos. If that is indeed the case, humanityfinds itself in a state of ontological cluelessness. I don't want makestrong claims as to whether humanity is in a state of ontologicalcluelessness, but I believe that it is a hypothesis worthtracking.
Ontological cluelessness can be intepreted in multiple versions withdiffering strength, where weaker versions may retain some fundamentalcategories (such as the notion of a concept, or the notion of knowledge);the strongest version calls into question all current ways of knowing (asin inventing notions as basic as the concept of a concept). Leaving thislatter kind of strong ontological cluelessness would entail an extremeupending of what we thought the cosmos was made of, the basic principlesby which it operated, and the ways to make sense of those principles.
Relation to Other Ideas in Philosophy
Ontological cluelessness is distinct from radicalskepticism,pyrrhonism andmysticism:
- It differs from radical skepticism in that it does not make any strong statement about whether knowledge is possible or not, and indeed a state of ontological cluelessness may hold open the possibility of far deeper or richer knowledge of the cosmos.It is close to pyrrhonism, but differs from it in not making a positive claim that judgment should be suspended.Ontological cluelessness differs from mysticism because it doesn't preclude the possibility of knowing, and doesn't promise the attainment of insight or mystical knowledge. It also doesn't claim spiritual meaning and knowledge is privileged over other kinds of knowledge.
Ontological cluelessness can be seen as a tacit pre-suppositionfor much foundational (mostly continental) metaphysical work(e.g. Heidegger, Deleuze, Whitehead, maybe Hegel?). That is,looking at Heidegger with his investigation of fundamentalontologyand Dasein (and especially his later Kehre andaletheia) and Deleuze withhis nomadic science, I feel like that's the kind of metaphysics one'dsee that resolves ontological cluelessness. Analytic metaphysics, asfar as I can tell, mostly tacitly rejects ontological cluelessness.
Ontological Cluing
I will call the process of resolving/exiting ontological cluelessness"ontological cluing". Ontological cluing could take three differentforms:
- "Additive ontological cluing", in which new categories and frameworks are added to existing ones to allow for a more adequate understanding of the cosmos (thus our current concepts represent a subspace optimum)."Replacing ontological cluing", in which existing categories and frameworks are wholly dropped.A secret third option, opened up by the process of ontological cluing.
Ontological cluing can also be thought of along two other axes:
- Recognizable vs. unrecognizable ontological cluing: Whether, when someone has undergone ontological cluing, a third person can recognize that fact.Communicable vs uncommunicable ontological cluing: Whether the ontological cluing can be communicated, and to what degree.
The secret third option is possible for both the recognizability and the communicability axis.
Superintelligences may help with ontological cluing if they are philosophically ormetaphilosophically competent.
Examples of Ontological Cluing?
This post has been pretty abstract so far, partly due to the abstractnature of the topic at hand. I don't want to speculate or pretend thatI can resolve ontological cluelessness if humanity is in that state, butI can give examples of intellectual advances that'd count as ontologicalcluing if humanity's ontological cluelessness lies in the past. Exampleswould include:
- The concept "concept".Both the intuitive mental motion of abstracting something, and the concept "abstraction".Developing both an intuitive understanding of causality, and developing a concept of "causality", and developing a formal theory of causality.The invention of language, mathematics.The moves from animism to paganism to monotheistic religions.
Likelihood
I personally think it's pretty likely that humanity is ontologicallyclueless, and if forced I'd put a 30% chance on it (though this numberis obviously fraught, since resolving ontological cluelessness may upendthe notion of probabilistic notion or probabilities, and after all maynever be resolved by experiment).
Humans don't seem to have been selected very strongly for understandingthe cosmos accurately, and also not selected very strongly to be competentat philosophy or metaphilosophy.
Practical Implications
I don't think that believing in the option of being ontologically cluelesshas immediate practical implications. It may lead one to take an openstance towards new conceptual schemes and frameworks, and a receptivityto what could be encountered. It may turn out that our actions mattermuch more than we think, or much less; it may turn out that the cosmosis much larger than we think, or much smaller; it may be the case thatthe universe is much better and forgiving than we believe, or much moreadversarial and unforgiving; and all of those notions could stop makingsense if we understand what, so to speak, "is going on".
Whether or not we are in a state of ontological cluelessness isa crucial consideration, but a frustratinglyvague one.
See Also
Nick Bostrom has been hinting at something adjacent to this in some recentinterviews (which, maddeningly, I can't find), and I wildly extrapolatedhis subtle hints; all the mistakes and muddled thinking lie with me.
- Alternative explanation, in form of poetry.
I will use the term "cosmos" a lot here because the entirety of existence may turn out to be much larger (think Tegmark IV) or much smaller (think solipsism) than what standard science considers to be the "universe". ↩︎
Discuss
