What Can We Know? The Limits and Nature of Knowledge

Five lessons on epistemology. What counts as knowledge? Where does the mind hit its ceiling? The Upanishads and Western epistemologists arrive at surprisingly similar boundaries.

Lessons in this chapter

• Can Words Capture Truth? — The Kena Upanishad and Wittgenstein arrived at the same boundary, 2,500 years apart.
• Is There Knowledge Beyond Reason? — The Mundaka's para vidya vs Bergson's intuition.
• What Are the States of Consciousness, and Do They Reveal Different Truths? — The Mandukya mapped four states of consciousness 2,500 years before phenomenology.
• Who Is the Knower Behind All Knowing? — Pippalada's students asked six questions. Husserl spent a lifetime on the same one.
• Does the Universe Have a Purpose, or Is It Just Process? — Leibniz asked 'why is there something rather than nothing?' The Prashna asked it first.

Back to The Big Questions: Upanishads and the Philosophers Who Followed