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：在这篇论文中，我将探讨一系列问题。首先涉及智能的一般生物学功能，特别是人类智能的认知增强工具。这些问题将引出关于人类语言——或许是人类发展史上最重要的认知增强工具——的探讨。尽管人们习惯赞颂人类语言所蕴含的认知力量，但我将着重强调人类语言是何等受限——进而说明即便借助语言增强，我们的认知能力仍是何等局限。由此引出人类数学（究其根本以人类语言为基础表述）是否也深受限制的问题。最后，我将综合这些问题，对本文的核心关切给出一个不完整的、侧面性的部分解答：对于连想象都无法企及的事物，我们究竟能认知到什么？