beyond wishful thinking 7lative insight into the world might provide a response to our existential
groundlessness. Th ey do not.
Suppose, for example, that we seek to list certain features that would
make one world more probable than another, enlisting in this eff ort the
semblance of a calculus of probability. We might, for example, imagine
that a full universe, with a great richness of manifestations, is more prob-
able than a meager one. It is an idle speculation.
Th e observed universe is, so far as we know or could ever know, the
only universe, although it may have pre de ces sors. Th e idea of a multi-
tude of other universes is not evoked by any observation, nor could it
be, for these other universes would have no causal communion with
ours. It is merely designed to fi ll a hole in certain scientifi c theories
(such as in string theory in contemporary particle physics) that make
many universes possible and therefore fi nd it con ve nient to imagine all
of them actual. With only one actual universe, and with no basis other
than the limitations and predilections of the human mind to distin-
guish possible and impossible universes, we lack the conditions for a
well- formed estimation of probabilities.
We come to recognize speculative groundlessness by facing the in-
terminable and contestable character of the presuppositions on which
all knowledge and belief rest. Every claim about the world relies on as-
sumptions, and each layer of assumptions on further layers of assump-
tions. We cannot justifi ably bring this layering of presuppositions to a
halt by an appeal to self- evidence, for example, to the self- evident status
of the axioms of Euclidean geometry. Our sense of self- evidence re-
mains parasitic on our perceptual apparatus, which evolved in our
embodied organisms to serve limited, practical goals.
Our more comprehensive claims about the world have an irreducible
pragmatic residue. If we cannot bring the chain of our presuppositions
to an end by an appeal to self- evidence, we can nevertheless justify the
conditional forms of understanding with which we are left by invoking
the predictions and initiatives that they inform, motivated by par tic u-
lar interests. Th e hard core of speculative groundlessness is the exis-
tence of intractable limits to our natural knowledge of the natural world.
Science, equipped with technology, extends these limits, but it does not
abolish them. With its help, we continue to view the world from the
vantage point of our embodied minds.