In this essay I will consider a sequence of questions. The first questions concern the biological function of intelligence in general, and cognitive prostheses of human intelligence in particular. These will lead into questions concerning human language, perhaps the most important cognitive prosthesis humanity has ever developed. While it is traditional to rhapsodize about the cognitive power encapsulated in human language, I will emphasize how horribly limited human language is - and therefore how limited our cognitive abilities are, despite their being augmented with language. This will lead to questions of whether human mathematics, being ultimately formulated in terms of human language, is also deeply limited. I will then combine these questions to pose a partial, sort-of, sideways answer to the guiding concern of this essay: what we can ever discern about that we cannot even conceive?

翻译：本文将对一系列问题进行探讨。首先涉及智能的生物学功能，尤其是人类智能的认知增强器。这些问题将引向人类语言——或许是人类有史以来最重要的认知增强器。尽管人们惯于颂扬人类语言所蕴含的认知力量，但我将着重强调人类语言存在着何等可怕的局限性——正因如此，即便在语言加持下，人类认知能力依然极度受限。由此将引申出更深层的问题：作为最终以人类语言形式表述的数学，是否同样存在根本性局限？最后，我将整合这些思考，对本文的核心问题——我们究竟能辨识出哪些连自身都无法构想的存在？——给出一个部分性、曲线式的回答。