Response: Limits of Knowledge

In response to Brandon Gaudet's post "Troll in the Dungeon, Werewolf in the Quad" (9/30/2012):

At the end of this post, you asked about whether humanity will ever get to a point where they can empirically observe all things, and thus confirm or dis-confirm without doubt the existence of immaterial phenomena, and if so, how will they know they have done so?

I doubt that humanity will ever reach such a point, and even if they do, I am quite certain that they will not know it. They may hypothesise that they know it, but in order to confirm it they would have to know everything, and I do not believe that will ever happen. I could, of course, be incorrect - that is a consequence of not knowing everything - but I think it is highly unlikely. It seems to contradict logic to suggest that one could know everything - would there not always be room for doubt? One could be absolutely certain about the status of everything in one's experience, but how could one know that nothing outside that experience exists? After all, such a thing would be outside one's experience and therefore one's knowledge. Thus, humanity will never be able to dis-confirm the theory that immaterial unicorns (or werewolves, as the case may be) cover every inch of the earth.