> ...not from a certainty that it is, in principle, undiscoverable.
In principle if we have to violate rights to obtain all of the relevant information, then some information must be undiscoverable.
In a more scientific bent, you have the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the existence of intractable computers science problems to support the idea that there opinion-free realms where science cannot provide solutions.
And I find labeling claims as opinion to dismiss them a bit facile. The underlying point is that there we conceded that there are practical considerations that make us act on incomplete information. Therefore we concede on a practical level that all things cannot be knowable. Conjecture and guesswork pervade everyday life.
It is interesting that you present the rights issue, as, while it is a valid response to the claim I made, it works just as well as the claim I made as a counter to your original claim about what the instructions to jurors tell us about the limits of knowledge.
Similarly, your use of quantum uncertainty is valid, but its discovery did not put a stop to physics - on the contrary, the discovery of QM has led to vast new areas of knowledge, and has even had metaphysical and epistemological implications (such as the constraints on realism that follow from Bell's inequality) that were never imagined in millennia of navel-gazing. Therefore, if anything, quantum uncertainty tends to stand as a counter-example to the apparent premise behind your claim that incomplete knowledge sets limits on science (I weasel-worded that sentence because I do believe that it could ultimately become a problem, if humanity survives long enough.)
I am not labeling a claim as opinion to dismiss it - in fact, if I cannot offer a definitive counter-argument, then my own position on the matter is an opinion - it is the transition from opinion to certainty that I find interesting. Searle's Chinese Room paper, for example, is an elaborate argument ultimately hung on the unexamined premise that syntax cannot give rise to semantics, and the non-sequitur that a model of a thing is not the thing itself, yet he declares that he has proven that a digital computer can never have a mind. This passing off of opinion as certainty may just be an issue of style within philosophy, but if so, it is an unfortunate one, as it makes it difficult to keep track of what has definitively been established and what remains as conjecture or premise. Certainly, there are many people who think Searle proved something in that paper, yet there is disagreement within that group as to what exactly that is.
Conjecture and guesswork pervade everyday life, science, and even philosophy.
In principle if we have to violate rights to obtain all of the relevant information, then some information must be undiscoverable.
In a more scientific bent, you have the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the existence of intractable computers science problems to support the idea that there opinion-free realms where science cannot provide solutions.
And I find labeling claims as opinion to dismiss them a bit facile. The underlying point is that there we conceded that there are practical considerations that make us act on incomplete information. Therefore we concede on a practical level that all things cannot be knowable. Conjecture and guesswork pervade everyday life.