Might the world be partially (but not thoroughly) intelligible in itself? Philosophers like Bertrand Russell and J. For it might be that the world is intelligible in itself but, while not entirely intelligible to us, at least partially intelligible to us. This distinction is an obvious one to draw if we think in terms of intelligibility to us. So we have an asymmetry here: While something could be intelligible in itself but not necessarily intelligible to us, if it really is intelligible to us – and doesn’t just seem to be – then it must also be intelligible in itself.Ī second distinction we might draw is that between the world’s being thoroughly intelligible and its being only partially intelligible. That would be a case of its merely seeming intelligible to us while not really being intelligible in itself, not a case of its really being intelligible to us while not really being intelligible in itself (whatever that could mean). If the world is not intelligible in itself, how could it be intelligible to us? To be sure, we might think that we’ve grasped some explanation even when we haven’t, but that is not the same thing. Might we turn this around and suggest also that the world could be intelligible to us but not intelligible in itself? This proposal seems incoherent. Perhaps our minds are too limited to discover it, or perhaps they are too limited to understand the explanation even if we can discover it. Suppose there is, objectively speaking, an explanation of why the world exists in the way it does. Whether we can grasp that explanation is another question. There are in fact a number of positions one could take on the question of the world’s intelligibility – though they are by no means all equally plausible.Ĭonsider first the distinction between the world’s being intelligible in itself and its being intelligible to us. To make these distinctions is to see that the questions are not susceptible of a simple Yes or No answer. Is reality intelligible? Can we make sense of it? Or is the world at bottom an unintelligible “brute fact” with no explanation? We can tighten up these questions by distinguishing several senses in which the world might be said to be (or not to be) intelligible.
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