Acatalepsy
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary:
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A·cat·a·lep·sy
n.
Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
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acatalepsy
Incomprehensibility. The impossibility of things being grasped by us, supposedly demonstrated by skeptical arguments.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Acatalepsy
Acatalepsy (from the Greek α̉-, privative, and καταλαμβάνειν, to seize), in philosophy, is incomprehensibleness, or the impossibility of comprehending or conceiving a thing.[1] The Pyrrhonians attempted to show, while Academic skeptics of the Platonic Academy asserted an absolute acatalepsia; all human science or knowledge, according to them, went no further than to appearances and verisimilitude.[1] It is the antithesis of the Stoic doctrine of catalepsy or Apprehension.[2] According to the Stoics, catalepsy was true perception, but to the Skeptics, all perceptions were acataleptic, i.e. bore no conformity to the objects perceived, or, if they did bear any conformity, it could never be known.[2]
Notes
- ^ a b
This article incorporates content from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain. - ^ a b George Henry Lewes, 1863, The biographical history of philosophy, Volume 1, page 297
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