Truly unthinkable

Question

Unthinkable may mean two different things:

1. Something that we cannot think about, normally for moral reasons, e.g. killing someone.
2. Something we cannot think about, because cognitively we are not capable of that.

I want a word to clearly refer to the second, without ambiguously referring to the former, which is the usual meaning (because the second is relatively unthinkable).

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Extra details:

"Truly unthinkable" is contradictory, in the sense that you cannot answer what is "truly unthinkable" for you. If you could, it would not be "truly unthinkable", because you can think about it at least to answer.

However, we can think of many things that are truly unthinkable for a dog, corporate strategy may be one of them.

Colors are not completely unthinkable for someone born blind, and music is not truly unthinkable for someone born deaf, both could learn about those things just like Mary the super-scientist.

Scrivener and caveman levels of unthinkable:

• If we travel in time and we explain to a scrivener that we can store millions of books in our smartphone, the way the smartphone works may be unthinkable or inconceivable to him, but he can understand what we are explaining by showing the smartphone.
• However, if we try to explain the same to a caveman, then it will be truly unthinkable and truly inconceivable because he does not know what a book is. Even showing a book would not help to understand what a book is, without knowing what the written language is (which is what is stored in the smartphone, not the physical book with pages made of paper).

The difference is that the scrivener may be impressed. Storing books like that is unthinkable, but clearly valuable. The caveman would consider us crazy, you cannot eat the books in the smartphone, and the actual books do not even taste good. The caveman may understand that you put big things into small things (which is not entirely true), but all those things are meaningless for him.

I am searching for a word that would apply to the caveman but not to the scrivener.

Example sentence: The smartphone was incomprehensible for the scrivener; he watched it in awe, estimating what kind of human labor could create such a miraculous wonder, painstakingly taking years to write each book. For the caveman, the device was incomprehensible, and therefore as meaningless and irrelevant as it would be for a snail.

Another: For me, quantum physics is unthinkable, I would have never figured out the wave-particle duality, not in a thousand years. However, the universe before time existed is unthinkable, I cannot think of precedence without time.

Answer 1

Incogitable. Its dictionary meaning is similar to other words of the same ilk such as unimaginable,inconceivable. However in usage, it almost always means your second meaning (Something we cannot think about, because cognitively we are not capable of that).

Example sentences from https://www.dictionary.com

• But this learned writer does not mention how we are to know when anything is ‘absolutely incogitable.’ History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3|Henry Thomas Buckle

• The more incogitable a thing becomes, the more ignorant of it do we become—that is the natural supposition. James Frederick Ferrier|Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane

• What falls out of consciousness becomes incogitable; it lapses, not into nothing, but into what is contradictory. James Frederick Ferrier|Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane

Answer 2

Besides "unthinkable", the most obvious choices are "unimaginable" and "inconceivable". However, all of those words might be used figuratively. (E.g.: "It's unimaginable that Canada would invade the United States.") I think that the word "incomprehensible" is less likely to be used figuratively and therefore may be what you want:

The idea that an electronic device can hold books would be incomprehensible to a caveman.
Corporate strategy is incomprehensible to a dog.

Answer 3

“Beyond our conception”

…would seem to be the idea the poster is trying to express. A phrase, but so is “truly unthinkable” (although very silly because it would be unthinkable to write “untruly unthinkable”, I think.)

Answer 4

I think you're talking about the distinction between whether something is "readily comprehensible" or "utterly incomprehensible" to a sentient, thinking being even if that subject matter, concept, or idea was not previously never known to the interlocutor.

Although the scrivener doesn't know exactly how the phone works, the utility of the phone is readily comprehensible to him even though he doesn't have the proper frame of reference to completely comprehend all the things a phone can do and is.

Whereas the caveman isn't readily going to comprehend the concept of a phone because there are so many other concepts and ideas he must also understand to make sense of it. This reminds me of the psychological concept of "schemas", or how we use our general knowledge that we already know to process stimuli/information in our environment that our brain use make sense of unfamiliar concepts or ideas like you're saying. So, although the button on the side of a phone I've never seen before is a different size than I've ever seen, I still know that generally that type of side button in my experience might control the volume by pressing it up or down if someone put a gun to my head and I HAD to guess.

But of course "understanding" is relative.

I'd personally say that the concept of a phone to a caveman is not readily comprehensible to him (i.e. ain't nobody got time to take the time to explain language, electricity, etc. but maybe just maybe if we took the time to that caveman he could understand it all one day after a lot of explaining and teaching), whereas with your example with the dog the subject matter would be "utterly incomprehensible" for Fido because there's no amount of time or teaching you could put in to teach a dog what the color blue is (because that dog doesn't have the necessary rods and cones to even see colors like us!)

Answer 5

Paralogical. This is a made up word with a plausible reading of “beyond the logical”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/para

There are plenty of words that in theory have the meaning of “truly unthinkable”, such as supernatural and paranormal, but these have become associated over time with observable phenomena that we can obviously think about and describe (reasonably) in stories. In contrast, something paralogical is something that we cannot reason about at all.

Not surprisingly, it has a definition in psychology:

https://psychologydictionary.org/paralogical-thinking/

To use the OP’s examples: For a caveman, a mobile phone would be paralogical. For a scrivener, it would be logical, but “like magic”. Its purpose could be grasped even if its inner workings could not be.

Answer 6

There is no word that will be immediately (i.e. without an explicit explanation) understood to have precisely the meaning you intend. If you are writing an article in which this concept needs to be used repeatedly, and the distinctions you present are important, you have to simply choose which of the relevant words you will use in which way, and then define them stipulatively, by saying, early in the article, something like:

In this article, I will use inconceivable for . . . and unimaginable for . . . .

Incidentally, you seem to assume that the difference between the scrivener example and the caveman example is a difference in kind (and that that's why we need different terms for them); some people may see them as different only in degree (and therefore see no need for the term that you are asking about).

Answer 7

Unthinkable may mean two different things:

1. Something that we cannot think about, normally for moral reasons, e.g. killing someone.

2. Something we cannot think about, because cognitively we are not capable of that.

You have not said where you found the definitions, nor have you given any examples of their published use.

You have limited 1. to morality and this is wrong:

OED

unthinkable: Too great, numerous, etc., to be conceived or apprehended by thought; unimaginable.

1897 Westm. Gaz. 6 July 2/1 You wander..in cool glades of unthinkable beauty.

For 2. you need inconceivable or unimaginable. This use of "unthinkable" is archaic:

OED (This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1926;)):

2. Incapable of being framed or grasped by thought; incogitable.

?1536 tr. Erasmus Serm. Chylde Jesus i. sig. A.iiii Jesus, which, by an unspeakable, nay with an unthinkable reason, is borne god of god.

1884 H. Spencer in Contemp. Rev. July 33 From whatever point of view we consider it, Bentham's proposition proves to be unthinkable.