how can research help us in overcoming our human limitations

The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them

Published: 20 January 2020
Volume 35 , article number 18 , ( 2020 )

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how can research help us in overcoming our human limitations

Maarten Boudry ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0932-3394 1 ,
Michael Vlerick 2 , 4 &
Taner Edis 3

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What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are ‘cognitively closed’ to some parts of the world, or that some problems will forever remain ‘mysteries’? In this paper we develop a richer conceptual toolbox for thinking about different forms and varieties of cognitive limitation, which are often conflated by the so-called ‘new mysterians’. We distinguish between representational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and imaginative understanding (immediate, intuitive comprehension of those representations), as well as between different modalities (hard vs. soft) of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations, drawing from the literature on distributed cognition and cognitive scaffolding’. This allows us to distinguish between the limits of bare brains vs. scaffolded brains. Most importantly, we argue that this panoply of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended. In the end, this allows us to turn the table on the mysterians: for every alleged ‘mystery’, they should demonstrate that no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution.

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Demystifying Mysteries. How Metaphors and Analogies Extend the Reach of the Human Mind

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Artificial Intelligence

In our previous work (Vlerick and Boudry 2017 ) we called these predicaments, respectively, “representational closure” and “psychological closure”. We have now decided to opt for a slightly different terminology, because the adjective “psychological” was too broad for our purposes.

In his original formulation, McGinn wrote that “A type of mind M is cognitively closed with respect to a property P (or theory T) if and only if the concept-forming procedures at M’s disposal cannot extend to a grasp of P (or an understanding of T)?” (McGinn 1989 , p. 350). By adding these parenthetical asides, McGinn suggests some rough equivalence, or a mere terminological difference. But there is a crucial difference between the claim that we cannot form a representation of some property P, and the claim that we cannot understand or grasp the representation itself.

According to the “extended mind” hypothesis in philosophy of mind (Clark and Chalmers 1998 ), the human mind literally extends beyond the skin/skull boundary, encompassing notebooks, computer screens, maps, file drawers, and so forth. But one does not need to embrace this radical philosophical view to appreciate how artefacts “extend” the reach of our minds.

Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675: https://bit.ly/2hIzhIe .

This thought experiment was earlier used in an essay for The Conversation (Boudry 2019 ).

It is curious that mysterians have not explored quantum mechanics as a possible example of a domain to which we are cognitively closed. This might perhaps be attributed to the fact that quantum mechanics is notoriously demanding, to the extent that even confidence about its status as a mystery might be hard to come by.

Δ x Δ p ≥ ℏ/2 is really Δ x Δ k ≥ ½ for waves in general, combined with the de Broglie relationship of p = ℏ k .

In this respect, a more consistent (and radical) form of mysterianism can be found in Kriegel ( 2003 ), who maintains a strict second-order ignorance about the reasons for our sense of mystery.

Bao L, Redish EF (2002) Understanding probabilistic interpretations of physical systems: a prerequisite to learning quantum physics. Am J Phys 70(3):210–217

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Manvir Singh in particular for making extensive comments on an earlier draft of this paper, thus lending his versatile mind to “scaffold” ours. We also wish to thank Daniel Dennett, Stefaan Blancke, two anonymous reviewers and several participants during a seminar at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at Leuven University, for offering useful feedback and constructive criticism.

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Boudry, M., Vlerick, M. & Edis, T. The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them. Biol Philos 35 , 18 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-9734-7

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Despite huge advances in science over the past century, our understanding of nature is still far from complete. Not only have scientists failed to find the Holy Grail of physics – unifying the very large (general relativity) with the very small (quantum mechanics) – they still don’t know what the vast majority of the universe is made up of. The sought after Theory of Everything continues to elude us. And there are other outstanding puzzles, too, such as how consciousness arises from mere matter.

Will science ever be able to provide all the answers? Human brains are the product of blind and unguided evolution. They were designed to solve practical problems impinging on our survival and reproduction, not to unravel the fabric of the universe. This realisation has led some philosophers to embrace a curious form of pessimism , arguing there are bound to be things we will never understand. Human science will therefore one day hit a hard limit – and may already have done so.

Some questions may be doomed to remain what the American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky called “mysteries” . If you think that humans alone have unlimited cognitive powers – setting us apart from all other animals – you have not fully digested Darwin’s insight that Homo Sapiens is very much part of the natural world.

But does this argument really hold up? Consider that human brains did not evolve to discover their own origins either. And yet somehow we managed to do just that. Perhaps the pessimists are missing something.

Mysterian arguments

“Mysterian” thinkers give a prominent role to biological arguments and analogies. In his 1983 landmark book The Modularity of Mind , the late philosopher Jerry Fodor claimed that there are bound to be “thoughts that we are unequipped to think”.

Similarly, the philosopher Colin McGinn has argued in a series of books and articles that all minds suffer from “cognitive closure” with respect to certain problems. Just as dogs or cats will never understand prime numbers, human brains must be closed off from some of the world’s wonders. McGinn suspects that the reason why philosophical conundrums such as the mind/body problem – how physical processes in our brain give rise to consciousness – prove to be intractable is that their true solutions are simply inaccessible to the human mind.

If McGinn is right that our brains are simply not equipped to solve certain problems, there is no point in even trying, as they will continue to baffle and bewilder us. McGinn himself is convinced that there is, in fact, a perfectly natural solution to the mind–body problem, but that human brains will never find it.

Even the psychologist Steven Pinker , someone who is often accused of scientific hubris himself , is sympathetic to the argument of the mysterians. If our ancestors had no need to understand the wider cosmos in order to spread their genes, he argues , why would natural selection have given us the brainpower to do so?

Mind-boggling theories

Mysterians typically present the question of cognitive limits in stark, black-or-white terms: either we can solve a problem, or it will forever defy us. Either we have cognitive access or we suffer from closure. At some point, human inquiry will suddenly slam into a metaphorical brick wall, after which we will be forever condemned to stare in blank incomprehension.

Another possibility, however, which mysterians often overlook, is one of slowly diminishing returns. Reaching the limits of inquiry might feel less like hitting a wall than getting bogged down in a quagmire. We keep slowing down, even as we exert more and more effort, and yet there is no discrete point beyond which any further progress at all becomes impossible.

There is another ambiguity in the thesis of the mysterians, which my colleague Michael Vlerick and I have pointed out in an academic paper. Are the mysterians claiming that we will never find the true scientific theory of some aspect of reality, or alternatively, that we may well find this theory but will never truly comprehend it?

In the science fiction series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy , an alien civilisation builds a massive supercomputer to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. When the computer finally announces that the answer is “42”, no one has a clue what this means (in fact, they go on to construct an even bigger supercomputer to figure out precisely this).

Is a question still a “mystery” if you have arrived at the correct answer, but you have no idea what it means or cannot wrap your head around it? Mysterians often conflate those two possibilities.

In some places, McGinn suggests that the mind–body problem is inaccessible to human science, presumably meaning that we will never find the true scientific theory describing the mind–body nexus. At other moments, however, he writes that the problem will always remain “numbingly difficult to make sense of” for human beings, and that “the head spins in theoretical disarray” when we try to think about it.

This suggests that we may well arrive at the true scientific theory, but it will have a 42-like quality to it. But then again, some people would argue that this is already true of a theory like quantum mechanics. Even the quantum physicist Richard Feynman admitted , “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

Would the mysterians say that we humans are “cognitively closed” to the quantum world? According to quantum mechanics, particles can be in two places at once, or randomly pop out of empty space. While this is extremely hard to make sense of, quantum theory leads to incredibly accurate predictions. The phenomena of “quantum weirdness” have been confirmed by several experimental tests , and scientists are now also creating applications based on the theory .

Mysterians also tend to forget how mindboggling some earlier scientific theories and concepts were when initially proposed. Nothing in our cognitive make-up prepared us for relativity theory, evolutionary biology or heliocentrism.

As the philosopher Robert McCauley writes : “When first advanced, the suggestions that the Earth moves, that microscopic organisms can kill human beings, and that solid objects are mostly empty space were no less contrary to intuition and common sense than the most counterintuitive consequences of quantum mechanics have proved for us in the twentieth century.” McCauley’s astute observation provides reason for optimism, not pessimism.

Mind extensions

But can our puny brains really answer all conceivable questions and understand all problems? This depends on whether we are talking about bare, unaided brains or not. There’s a lot of things you can’t do with your naked brain. But Homo Sapiens is a tool-making species, and this includes a range of cognitive tools.

For example, our unaided sense organs cannot detect UV-light, ultrasound waves, X-rays or gravitational waves. But if you’re equipped with some fancy technology you can detect all those things. To overcome our perceptual limitations, scientists have developed a suite of tools and techniques: microscopes, X-ray film, Geiger counters, radio satellites detectors and so forth.

All these devices extend the reach of our minds by “translating” physical processes into some format that our sense organs can digest. So are we perceptually “closed” to UV light? In one sense, yes. But not if you take into account all our technological equipment and measuring devices.

In a similar way, we use physical objects (such as paper and pencil) to vastly increase the memory capacity of our naked brains. According to the British philosopher Andy Clark , our minds quite literally extend beyond our skins and skulls, in the form of notebooks, computers screens, maps and file drawers.

Mathematics is another fantastic mind-extension technology, which enables us to represent concepts that we couldn’t think of with our bare brains. For instance, no scientist could hope to form a mental representation of all the complex interlocking processes that make up our climate system. That’s exactly why we have constructed mathematical models and computers to do the heavy lifting for us.

Cumulative knowledge

Most importantly, we can extend our own minds to those of our fellow human beings. What makes our species unique is that we are capable of culture, in particular cumulative cultural knowledge. A population of human brains is much smarter than any individual brain in isolation.

And the collaborative enterprise par excellence is science. It goes without saying that no single scientist would be capable of unravelling the mysteries of the cosmos on her own. But collectively, they do. As Isaac Newton wrote, he could see further by “standing on the shoulders of giants”. By collaborating with their peers, scientists can extend the scope of their understanding, achieving much more than any of them would be capable of individually.

Today, fewer and fewer people understand what is going on at the cutting edge of theoretical physics – even physicists. The unification of quantum mechanics and relativity theory will undoubtedly be exceptionally daunting, or else scientists would have nailed it long ago already.

The same is true for our understanding of how the human brain gives rise to consciousness, meaning and intentionality. But is there any good reason to suppose that these problems will forever remain out of reach? Or that our sense of bafflement when thinking of them will never diminish?

In a public debate I moderated a few years ago, the philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out a very simple objection to the mysterians’ analogies with the minds of other animals: other animals cannot even understand the questions. Not only will a dog never figure out if there’s a largest prime, but it will never even understand the question. By contrast, human beings can pose questions to each other and to themselves, reflect on these questions, and in doing so come up with ever better and more refined versions.

Mysterians are inviting us to imagine the existence of a class of questions that are themselves perfectly comprehensible to humans, but the answers to which will forever remain out of reach. Is this notion really plausible (or even coherent)?

Alien anthropologists

To see how these arguments come together, let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine that some extraterrestrial “anthropologists” had visited our planet around 40,000 years ago to prepare a scientific report about the cognitive potential of our species. Would this strange, naked ape ever find out about the structure of its solar system, the curvature of space-time or even its own evolutionary origins?

At that moment in time, when our ancestors were living in small bands of hunter-gatherers , such an outcome may have seemed quite unlikely. Although humans possessed quite extensive knowledge about the animals and plants in their immediate environment, and knew enough about the physics of everyday objects to know their way around and come up with some clever tools, there was nothing resembling scientific activity.

There was no writing, no mathematics, no artificial devices for extending the range of our sense organs. As a consequence, almost all of the beliefs held by these people about the broader structure of the world were completely wrong. Human beings didn’t have a clue about the true causes of natural disaster, disease, heavenly bodies, the turn of the seasons or almost any other natural phenomenon.

Our extraterrestrial anthropologist might have reported the following:

Evolution has equipped this upright, walking ape with primitive sense organs to pick up some information that is locally relevant to them, such as vibrations in the air (caused by nearby objects and persons) and electromagnetic waves within the 400-700 nanometer range, as well as certain larger molecules dispersed in their atmosphere.

However, these creatures are completely oblivious to anything that falls outside their narrow perceptual range. Moreover, they can’t even see most of the single-cell life forms in their own environment, because these are simply too small for their eyes to detect. Likewise, their brains have evolved to think about the behaviour of medium-sized objects (mostly solid) under conditions of low gravity. None of these earthlings has ever escaped the gravitational field of their planet to experience weightlessness, or been artificially accelerated so as to experience stronger gravitational forces. They can’t even conceive of space-time curvature, since evolution has hard-wired zero-curvature geometry of space into their puny brains. In conclusion, we’re sorry to report that most of the cosmos is simply beyond their ken.

But those extraterrestrials would have been dead wrong. Biologically, we are no different than we were 40,000 years ago, but now we know about bacteria and viruses, DNA and molecules, supernovas and black holes, the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum and a wide array of other strange things.

We also know about non-Euclidean geometry and space-time curvature, courtesy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity . Our minds have “reached out” to objects millions of light years away from our planet, and also to extremely tiny objects far below the perceptual limits of our sense organs. By using various tricks and tools, humans have vastly extended their grasp on the world.

The verdict: biology is not destiny

The thought experiment above should be a counsel against pessimism about human knowledge. Who knows what other mind-extending devices we will hit upon to overcome our biological limitations? Biology is not destiny. If you look at what we have already accomplished in the span of a few centuries, any rash pronouncements about cognitive closure seem highly premature.

Mysterians often pay lip service to the values of “humility” and “modesty”, but on closer examination, their position is far less restrained than it appears. Take McGinn’s confident pronouncement that the mind–body problem is “an ultimate mystery” that we will “never unravel”. In making such a claim, McGinn assumes knowledge of three things: the nature of the mind–body problem itself, the structure of the human mind, and the reason why never the twain shall meet. But McGinn offers only a superficial overview of the science of human cognition, and pays little or no attention to the various devices for mind extension.

I think it’s time to turn the tables on the mysterians. If you claim that some problem will forever elude human understanding, you have to show in some detail why no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution. That is a taller order than most mysterians have acknowledged.

Moreover, by spelling out exactly why some problems will remain mysterious, mysterians risk being hoisted by their own petard. As Dennett wrote in his latest book : “As soon as you frame a question that you claim we will never be able to answer, you set in motion the very process that might well prove you wrong: you raise a topic of investigation.”

In one of his infamous memorandum notes on Iraq, former US secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, makes a distinction between two forms of ignorance: the “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. In the first category belong the things that we know we don’t know. We can frame the right questions, but we haven’t found the answers yet. And then there are the things that “we don’t know we don’t know”. For these unknown unknowns, we can’t even frame the questions yet.

It is quite true that we can never rule out the possibility that there are such unknown unknowns, and that some of them will forever remain unknown, because for some (unknown) reason human intelligence is not up to the task.

But the important thing to note about these unknown unknowns is that nothing can be said about them. To presume from the outset that some unknown unknowns will always remain unknown, as mysterians do, is not modesty – it’s arrogance.

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Recent progress in artificial intelligence provides the opportunity to ask the question of what is unique about human intelligence, but with a new comparison class. I argue that we can understand human intelligence, and the ways in which it may differ from artificial intelligence, by considering the characteristics of the kind of computational problems that human minds have to solve. I claim that these problems acquire their structure from three fundamental limitations that apply to human beings: limited time, limited computation, and limited communication. From these limitations we can derive many of the properties we associate with human intelligence, such as rapid learning, the ability to break down problems into parts, and the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	873-883
Number of pages	11
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Volume	24
Issue number	11
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Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
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artificial intelligence
cultural evolution
inductive bias
meta-learning
rational meta-reasoning

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Frailty, Suffering, and Vice

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Positive psychology studies the strengths that enable individuals to thrive. It is founded on the belief that we want to cultivate our best virtues and traits, and enhance our lives by embracing our best selves. But we are imperfect creatures. How do we realize our best selves and flourish in the face of our frailty, suffering, and vice?

This volume addresses the human condition in its entirety and discusses the pathways to flourishing in light of the everyday limitations that we all must face. Fowers, Richardson, and Slife discuss what they call the "breathless optimism" of positive psychology and explain how human dependency, limits, and suffering are not just negatives to be overcome. Rather they are part of our journey toward development and thriving.

Frailty, Suffering, and Vice: Flourishing in the Face of Human Limitations is a vital corrective for the conceptual and practical limitations of contemporary scholarship, reminding us all that understanding our limitations is essential to living the best kind of life.

Introduction

A Framework for a Good Life
Virtue and Vice
Complications
Human Limits
Evil and the Vicious Character
Human Frailty and the Good Life

About the Authors

Blaine J. Fowers, PhD, is a professor of counseling psychology at the University of Miami.

He is the author of four other books, including The Evolution of Ethics: Human Sociality and the Emergence of Ethical Mindedness and Virtue and Psychology: Pursuing Excellence in Ordinary Practices .

He conducts theoretical and empirical research on virtues, higher order goals, and their links to choiceworthy goods and human flourishing.

Dr. Fowers has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Birmingham, England, in 2016.

He is a past president of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and a recipient of the Joseph B. Gittler Award for Contributions to the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology.

Frank C. Richardson, PhD, is an emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, Austin.

He is the author or editor of several books, including Re-Envisioning Psychology: Moral Dimensions of Theory and Practice and Critical Thinking About Psychology: Hidden Assumptions and Plausible Alternatives and the author of more than 100 articles and chapters in theoretical psychology and the philosophy of social science.

He is a past president of APA Division 24 (Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology), from which he recently received a Lifetime Achievement award. His current scholarly interests include topics in psychology and religion.

Brent D. Slife, PhD, is the Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding and a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University.

Honored with an APA Presidential Citation for his contribution to psychology, he has served as the president of the Society of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and is currently the editor-in-chief of the APA Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and the editor of the Routledge book series in theoretical and philosophical psychology.

Dr. Slife has authored or coauthored more than 200 articles and 10 books, and continues his psychotherapy practice of over 30 years where he specializes in marital and family therapies.

This book brings the positive psychology discussion to the level of depth that is needed for understanding the art of living fully, with wisdom, humility, and grace. It tackles both virtue and vice, a rare and stimulating contribution. Mature, readable, and deeply human. —Veronika Huta, PhD Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; cofounder of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association

For Fowers, Richardson, and Slife, flourishing means much more than being oriented to the positives in life. It means staying with and drawing from the vulnerability, pain, and sorrow that life with others inevitably entails and seeing them as vitally important parts of the human drama. This book is a sophisticated, wise, and timely check on the mythology of untrammeled happiness and the self-contained individualism it often brings in tow. A true celebration of the full scope of our humanity. —Mark Freeman, PhD College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA

The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

Original language	English
Article number	18
Number of pages	16
Journal
Volume	35
DOIs
Publication status	Published - 20 Jan 2020

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10.1007/s10539-020-9734-7

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Cognitive Limitations Keyphrases 100%
Human Cognitive Keyphrases 100%
End of Science Keyphrases 100%
Cognitive Arts and Humanities 100%
Limitations Arts and Humanities 100%
Limits Arts and Humanities 40%
Mystery Arts and Humanities 40%
What-if Keyphrases 25%

T1 - The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them

AU - Boudry, Maarten

AU - Vlerick, Michael

AU - Edis, Taner

PY - 2020/1/20

Y1 - 2020/1/20

N2 - What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are ‘cognitively closed’ to some parts of the world, or that some problems will forever remain ‘mysteries’? In this paper we develop a richer conceptual toolbox for thinking about different forms and varieties of cognitive limitation, which are often conflated by the so-called ‘new mysterians’. We distinguish between representational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and imaginative understanding (immediate, intuitive comprehension of those representations), as well as between different modalities (hard vs. soft) of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations, drawing from the literature on distributed cognition and cognitive scaffolding’. This allows us to distinguish between the limits of bare brains vs. scaffolded brains. Most importantly, we argue that this panoply of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended. In the end, this allows us to turn the tableon the mysterians: for every alleged ‘mystery’, they should demonstrate that no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution.

AB - What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are ‘cognitively closed’ to some parts of the world, or that some problems will forever remain ‘mysteries’? In this paper we develop a richer conceptual toolbox for thinking about different forms and varieties of cognitive limitation, which are often conflated by the so-called ‘new mysterians’. We distinguish between representational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and imaginative understanding (immediate, intuitive comprehension of those representations), as well as between different modalities (hard vs. soft) of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations, drawing from the literature on distributed cognition and cognitive scaffolding’. This allows us to distinguish between the limits of bare brains vs. scaffolded brains. Most importantly, we argue that this panoply of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended. In the end, this allows us to turn the tableon the mysterians: for every alleged ‘mystery’, they should demonstrate that no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution.

U2 - 10.1007/s10539-020-9734-7

DO - 10.1007/s10539-020-9734-7

M3 - Article

SN - 0169-3867

JO - Biology and Philosophy

JF - Biology and Philosophy

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Future thinking school, home delivery, platform europe, mediaservice, human limitations – limited humanity: the possibility of going beyond borders.

Katia Kreuzhuber

How far can we go as human beings, where are our personal limits, where are the limits of my body? Under the title “Human Limitations – Limited Humanity”, the 2019 Ars Electronica Festival ‘s theme exhibition not only explores these simultaneously very individual questions, but also raises probably the greatest questions of society itself. Co-Producer Christl Baur and Gerfried Stocker, artistic director, are convinced that new technologies such as bioengineering and artificial intelligence make it more important than ever to reflect on the moral principles we have imposed on ourselves. They take us on a journey deep down into the POSTCITY bunker , the venue of the theme exhibition, where we not only encounter language, physical optimizations, robots that can run faster than we do, or even love, but also finally face our human limits.

The festival theme “Out of the Box” – what is the meaning in the context of the theme exhibitions?

Gerfried Stocker: When it comes to Out of the Box, the subtitle is very important: The midlife crisis of the digital revolution . The fact that 40 years ago the social colonization of digital space began is where everything started. This is the time when desktop computers appeared, the PC – the personal computer – came onto the market in 1981 and this is the moment when important, effective technology came into people’s personal lives. It also became a private dimension. This is exactly the topic that we have been dealing with for 40 years now. Not the technological side of the digital revolution, but the cultural, the social. We are now asking ourselves the question, “This cannot have been everything”, it cannot be true that this wonderful dream of new possibilities of these digital media, of the global village that supplies people with information and expression on an equal level, has become the nightmare of a monitored, controlled society. The answer we’re trying to give is an invitation: out of the box, out of the cellars, out of the holes, out of the cover, out of the comfort zone. Because what we are seeing now is not technology, it is not economics, it is humanity. These are questions of human dignity that are very much being asked. That was the idea behind 40 years of Ars Electronica: Let’s take a look at how we have achieved the great success of the digital revolution in these 40 years, where do we stand now, are we satisfied with it, and how do we have to change our behavior, change our goals? That’s the theme of Out of the Box and – typical for Ars Electronica – the focus is on the human being.

The human being, the humanity leads us directly to the topic of the Theme Exhibition: Under the title “Human Limitations – Limited Humanity” we once again enter the POSTCITY bunker. Which human imperfections and limitations of humanity do we encounter?

Gerfried Stocker: The basic question before we dive into the exhibitions is why do we develop technologies? And there are two interesting basic patterns. One is very practical and pragmatic: we are limited as human beings. We have these limitations of our humanity, our physicality. The most beautiful example is, if you are born without fur and it is winter, you will only survive if you have technology. That is why we have been developing tools for thousands of years to overcome our limits, our limitations – the real ones as well as the perceived ones. At the same time, the development of technology, research, science and art – which brings them together so closely – is always connected with the idea, the conception of exceeding ourselves. Not only operatively in the sense of the tools, but also in a philosophical, spiritual sense. When we enter the epoch of artificial intelligence, from automation to the autonomization of things, what does that mean for our image of humanity? The questioning of our image of the human being must stand right at the beginning of everything – that’ s what the exhibition is based on.

Christl Baur: We have focused on questioning the two essential technologies that we believe will fundamentally change our image of humanity, our image of society, in the near future. Artificial Intelligence, as well as Biotechnologies, change the question of what the human being means, what does our body mean, but also a psychological approach: How do we perceive ourselves, where do we set our limits? AI will have a major influence on us as a society, although we see it as another tool, the question arises: how do we deal with it at the end of the day? How can we still influence these technologies, these developments so that we find a way to live together with them? How can we as humans create free spaces, subversive spaces, where we can continue to define ourselves with the thoughts and goals of human coexistence – regardless of the technology or in exchange with the technology?

Gerfried Stocker: It is about the field of understanding what is our image of humankind in the 21st century and the question of possible courses of action: As humans, do we remain at the centre of controlling what we develop, what we incite with AI? The key is responsibility without assuming responsibility – for this, of course, you also need knowledge and competence – that is the beautiful cycle in which these artistic projects operate. An interesting reflection on the question: Where do we stand as human beings now, on this threshold in the 21st century into an – even if that sounds exaggerated, but we stand on a threshold in a time of artificial intelligence, of autonomous systems. We need to reflect on this and work on it. The artistic projects offer orientation, the concept of the compass once again comes up. How can one reposition itself in this reorientation?

Are there again focal points or subdivisions within the theme exhibition?

Christl Baur: Particularly in the confrontation with the artistic works – most of which, by the way, originate from the submissions to the Prix Ars Electronica – several focal points have emerged that the artists are obviously very concerned with and which, as a result of this development, have also become essential elements of the theme exhibition. One of these is the subject of language. Language is something through which we strongly define ourselves as humans, the way we communicate with one another, empathy with another person, with an animal, with a plant. But also language in the form of a document that we archive, where we are able to make human knowledge accessible to further generations over thousands of years. Which of course is what defines us in a very different way from the communication channels of other species. This subject of language has also been used over the centuries, especially in authoritarian systems, to manipulate people, to use language for certain goals and purposes.

A very nice work in this context is Radiosands by Thom Kubli , who uses the technology of radio, which was mainly used in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s to influence crowds of people and in a certain way to make themselves submissive. Language in this context is a different issue, especially in exchange with the artificial systems today, we create AI systems that are able to write texts, communicate with us, so that we as humans no longer perceive any difference whether a real person communicates with us or a system. The underlying danger is that we do not know where the information comes from, any kind of information can be processed. Fake News – that’ s known to everyone by now. But also quite clearly the question: Which information do we rely on? What is the essence of our judgment at the end of the day? That’s one of the thematic aspects.

“Particularly in the confrontation with the artistic works – most of which, by the way, originate from the submissions to the Prix Ars Electronica – several focal points have emerged that the artists are obviously very concerned with and which, as a result of this development, have also become essential elements of the theme exhibition.”

Gerfried Stocker: Also the appreciation. The interesting thing is, we’re in a situation where we can’t distinguish anymore, if it comes from a person or a machine, although this is what everyone agrees on, that this will be very important for us. The fact that we value more what comes from another person than what comes from the machine is a fundamental axiom of our system of values. This is something that is questioned in our experimental projects.

Christl Baur: We have to question our system of values, how we react to situations that no longer correspond to the everyday situations of the last 50 years, and how society adapts to this changed system of values.

You mentioned language as a subtopic, are there others?

Christl Baur: A second sub-theme, which interprets human limitations in a broader sense in the form of an individual approach, is the limitations of the body itself. Through biotechnologies, genetic modification, and technologies that are related to this, we are able to change something not only in our body, but in the form of prostheses or tattoos, we are able to modify and change our genetic substance for us humans. This raises the question: What possibilities do we have, but also what critical approaches do we create. Also in consideration of the fact that as a society we have defined boundaries, what is ethically permissible and what is allowed by our morals, within these boundaries we feel safe and we are moving. Of course we can also discuss or expand them, but these boundaries must be completely reworked and rethought, especially by philosophers and ethicists. What does it actually mean to be human? Does it mean that we have two arms, that we have an artificial heart, that a marathon runner can get a new heart implanted so that he can run faster? Or does it mean that only a sick person can have a new heart to survive?

On the other hand, it is precisely these boundaries that we have created ourselves, that help us navigate through what is right and what is wrong, what we allow ourselves to do, that could also be used positively, with all the interventions that we are currently doing to our world in the form of climate change, migratory flows and so on. Can we modify our body to such an extent that it does not become a superhuman, but a better human being who also adapts to environmental sustainability? In that case, would that be a technology that could have a positive effect so that we can survive on this earth for more than 50 years?

Gerfried Stocker: I think this is an exciting paradox in its simplicity: we have never before had so many opportunities to go beyond our limits. The typical limitations of humans can be removed and overcome with technology. We have robots that run faster than us, we have AI systems that can do certain things much better than us. At the moment we are asking ourselves whether humanity as such is at its limit? This paradox, that in overcoming our borders we come to the limits of our idea of what humanity is, is exactly what we have to realistically say: we need a discussion of society as a whole and a new consensus on how we can redefine and reinvent humanity and human dignity in the 21st century, without accepting bad compromises. The call for regulation on the Internet is justified, it is loud from both sides, but the big question is, whose rules of the game are these? Whose norms and moral concepts – in this future world in which we fundamentally change the image of man through AI and genetic engineering and biotechnology – whose moral concepts will we subjugate ourselves to, on what can we agree? This is a debate that is only just starting, when you realize that completely new players are becoming involved. We have never had a situation where children, who are under 18, have taken the lead in the debate about our actions on the planet. It is exciting to see how developments converge that will certainly determine the coming decades.

Let’s go a little further into the Theme Exhibition. Which projects await us and how do they subordinate themselves to the title of the exhibition? Can you highlight some of the outstanding projects?

Christl Baur: Thom Kubli has been mentioned before in the context of language. A second project is nimiia cetii by Jenna Sutela. She is a Finnish artist who, together with Memo Akten, has approached the subject of language as well as Trans-Species Communication and has created a very beautiful, very poetic work that places the translation, the speaking to each other in an extremely beautiful context, where you can perceive, although you don’t understand how different systems – an AI, bacteria, an already extinct language – manage to create their own new language together. We have a few in the bunker regarding this approach – whether with plants, bats, … – but each of them asks exactly the same questions with a common approach: How can we deal with other species? What is their strength, their weakness? Mushroom networks, root networks of mushrooms, how do they communicate with each other? This is not understandable for us humans. We do not know how they transport information, but it could be essential for our survival. Artificial intelligence could help to understand or develop a different approach by quickly interpreting and analysing data.

Gerfried Stocker: Also in the work of Špela Petrič , Institute for Inconspicuous Languages: Reading Lips, it is totally exciting to see that on the AI side as well as on the biotech side of artistic work there is exactly this common point: Not only this autistic view of humanity itself, but the opening up and speculative assumption that there will be artificial forms of life, however they may be. How can we communicate with them? What can be a form of Trans-Species Communication? That’s the great thing about it, because it gives us new ideas and inspiration to think about what’s special about human beings and maybe lose one or the other arrogance. A realistic view that we are only one of many life forms of the planet can of course not only help us in the further development of these technologies, but perhaps also help us to take a new position in dealing with the big environmental problems, which will probably be more dominant in the next decades than anything we imagine at the moment about AI in science fiction terms.

Christl Baur: Another approach to the context of language that I think is very important is the wording and the way we describe artificial intelligence. We always create images that are very similar to human beings: We talk in the form of a brain, we talk in the form of neural networks, of neurons about an AI. We produce an image in order to understand the processes. Speculative Artificial Intelligence by Birk Schmithüsen does exactly this – he creates a kind of extended brain, where he symbolizes individual neurons via LED spots and tries to illustrate a kind of communication, of language transfer via a visual level. But for me, the question is quite clear: we need new terms, how we talk about AI, so that we are able to understand the technology, but also so that we understand the bigger context – also in the philosophical and ethical way of thinking.

Gerfried Stocker: Also I’am, the work of Marta De Menezes . It leads us very nicely back to the fact that, in the end, it is not about further developing technology, but rather about ourselves and the interaction, from person to person. She and her husband, longtime spouse, now artist, scientist, live and work together and then do the exciting but also intense experiment in which they exchange antibodies of their body, their entity. And connected with this is the question: How can the togetherness and antagonism of people look like? They bring the question to a very essential and poetic dimension.

Christl Baur: …and then she associates it with the very human feeling of love, which poets and philosophers have already written countless papers about, but which is the essence of the work alongside all the technologies that she uses and on which she and her partner research. It is about love, empathy between us humans, between us and other species and how we can live in a mutual unity.

Christl Baur is co-producer at Ars Electronica, researcher with an interdisciplinary background in art history, cultural management, and natural science. She is particularly interested in the conjunction of aesthetic and social practices that center on collaboration and experimentation and challenge dominant social, political, and economic protocols. Her research field encompasses topics such as video art, new media technologies, computer, biotechnology and interactive art, and she works at the nexus of art & science. Over recent years, she has developed, co-produced and delivered large-scale exhibitions and performances, research, residency & publication projects—most recently in cooperation with universities and scientific associations such as Google Arts & Culture, Microsoft, Hyundai as well as the Chinese University of Art Beijing. She works closely together with artists whose practice is situated at the interface of art, science, and technology.

Gerfried Stocker is a media artist and telecommunications engineer. In 1991, he founded x-space, a team formed to carry out interdisciplinary projects, which went on to produce numerous installations and performances featuring elements of interaction, robotics and telecommunications.Since 1995, Gerfried Stocker has been artistic director of Ars Electronica. In 1995-96, he headed the crew of artists and technicians that developed the Ars Electronica Center’s pioneering new exhibition strategies and set up the facility’s in-house R&D department, the Ars Electronica Futurelab. He has been chiefly responsible for conceiving and implementing the series of international exhibitions that Ars Electronica has staged since 2004, and, beginning in 2005, for the planning and thematic repositioning of the new, expanded Ars Electronica Center, which opened its doors in January 2009.

This year’s Ars Electronica Festival Theme Exhibition will run September 5-9, 2019 at POSTCITY Linz. Consult our website for details.

To learn more about Ars Electronica, follow us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram et al., subscribe to our newsletter , and check us out online at https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/ .

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The end of inquiry? How to overcome human cognitive limitations

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How do Humans Overcome Individual Computational Limitations by Working Together?

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1 Department of Psychology, Harvard University.
2 Center for Human-Compatible AI, University of California, Berekely.
3 Department of Psychology, Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
4 Department of Psychology, University of California, Berekely.
PMID: 36655981
PMCID: PMC10334258
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13232

Since the cognitive revolution, psychologists have developed formal theories of cognition by thinking about the mind as a computer. However, this metaphor is typically applied to individual minds. Humans rarely think alone; compared to other animals, humans are curiously dependent on stores of culturally transmitted skills and knowledge, and we are particularly good at collaborating with others. Rather than picturing the human mind as an isolated computer, we can imagine each mind as a node in a vast distributed system. Viewing human cognition through the lens of distributed systems motivates new questions about how humans share computation, when it makes sense to do so, and how we can build institutions to facilitate collaboration.

Keywords: Cognitive modeling; Collaboration; Cultural evolution; Distributed computing; Social cognition.

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The end of inquiry - Dialectica.docx

What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some truths about the universe are perennial mysteries and will forever remain beyond our ken. Others have brushed this off as premature, a form of epistemic defeatism. In this paper we develop a conceptual toolbox for parsing different forms of cognitive limitation that are often conflated in the literature. We distinguish between representational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and intuitive understanding (the ability to comprehend those representations). We also distinguish different modalities of cognitive limitation. If the scientific endeavor ever comes to a halt, will this feel like slamming into a brick wall, or rather like slowly getting bogged down in a swamp? By distinguishing different types and modalities of human cognitive limitation, we soften up the hypothesis of ‘cognitive closure’ and ultimate ‘mysteries.’ Next, we look at specific mechanisms and strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations. For a start, we are not restricted by the limits of a single, bare, unassisted brain. One of the central features of human intelligence is the capacity for mind extension and distributed cognition. This enables us to radically extend our representational access, as witnessed by the history of science. Less obviously, scientists can extend their intuitive understanding as well. They do so by deploying different cognitive mechanisms which, importantly, are combinatorial and open-ended. In light of all these possibilities for extending the limits of understanding, we conclude that there is no good reason to suspect the existence of an outer wall of human comprehension, as several prominent epistemic pessimists have suggested.

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Vlerick, Michael

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The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them

2020, Biology and Philosophy

What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are 'cognitively closed' to some parts of the world, or that some problems will forever remain 'mysteries'? In this paper we develop a richer conceptual toolbox for thinking about different forms and varieties of cognitive limitation, which are often conflated by the so-called 'new mysterians'. We distinguish between repre-sentational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and imaginative understanding (immediate, intuitive comprehension of those representations), as well as between different modalities (hard vs. soft) of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations, drawing from the literature on distributed cognition and cogni-tive scaffolding'. This allows us to distinguish between the limits of bare brains vs. scaffolded brains. Most importantly, we argue that this panoply of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended. In the end, this allows us to turn the table on the mysterians: for every alleged 'mystery', they should demonstrate that no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution.

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Maarten Boudry

James F . Phillips

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Witold M . Wachowski

The aim of this paper is to discuss the concept of distributed cogni-tion (DCog) in the context of classic questions posed by mainstream cognitive science. We support our remarks by appealing to empirical evidence from the fields of cognitive science and ethnography. Particular attention is paid to the structure and functioning of a cognitive system, as well as its external representations. We analyze the problem of how far we can push the study of human cognition without taking into account what is underneath an individual's skin. In light of our discussion, a distinction between DCog and the extended mind becomes important.

Leslie Marsh

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This paper discusses two perspectives, each of which recognises the importance of environmental resources in enhancing and amplifying our cognitive capacity. One is the Clark–Chalmers model, extended further by Clark and others. The other derives from niche construction models of evolution, models which emphasise the role of active agency in enhancing the adaptive fit between agent and world. In the human case, much niche construction is epistemic: making cognitive tools and assembling other informational resources that support and scaffold intelligent action. I shall argue that extended mind cases are limiting cases of environmental scaffolding, and while the extended mind picture is not false, the niche construction model is a more helpful framework for understanding human action.

Luis Miguel García Sánchez

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Given that human cognition is biased and limited, how can we explain the successes in mathematics and the sciences over the last few centuries? In other words: if we see through a glass darkly, why is it that mathematicians and scientists seem to be able to surmount their cognitive limitations to some extent? This dissertation provides a naturalistic philosophical study of the relationship between evolved human cognitive biases and formal modes of knowledge acquisition. It presents an analysis of key notions from cognitive science that have been the focus of recent debates in empirically-informed epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind including innateness, mental modularity, extended cognition, epistemic action, and evolutionary (debunking) arguments for the reliability of beliefs. One key finding is that a naturalistic picture of formal knowledge acquisition should not only take into account evolved cognitive biases, but also the way humans routinely supplement their internal cognitive resources with external support. Using examples from the domain of arithmetic and the life sciences, the thesis indicates that humans draw on a variety of epistemic tools, including artifacts, symbols, metaphors and other minds. Nevertheless, my second key claim is that evolved cognitive biases play a significant role in mathematical and scientific practice. Case studies from arithmetic, paleoanthropology and evolutionary biology indicate that what people regard as intelligible is influenced by their evolved cognitive architecture. The thesis ends by outlining some normative, epistemic and metaphysical perspectives that a naturalistic philosophy of science can offer.

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David Castellanos Suarez

Probing the Limits of Mind and Brain Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science, Spring 2002 Issue http://www. sfu. ca/cognitive-science/journal/ 34 PROBING THE LIMITS OF MIND AND BRAIN Dave Suarez Undergraduate Student Simon Fraser University ...

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Paula t. ross.

Medical School, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA

Nikki L. Bibler Zaidi

Study limitations represent weaknesses within a research design that may influence outcomes and conclusions of the research. Researchers have an obligation to the academic community to present complete and honest limitations of a presented study. Too often, authors use generic descriptions to describe study limitations. Including redundant or irrelevant limitations is an ineffective use of the already limited word count. A meaningful presentation of study limitations should describe the potential limitation, explain the implication of the limitation, provide possible alternative approaches, and describe steps taken to mitigate the limitation. This includes placing research findings within their proper context to ensure readers do not overemphasize or minimize findings. A more complete presentation will enrich the readers’ understanding of the study’s limitations and support future investigation.

Introduction

Regardless of the format scholarship assumes, from qualitative research to clinical trials, all studies have limitations. Limitations represent weaknesses within the study that may influence outcomes and conclusions of the research. The goal of presenting limitations is to provide meaningful information to the reader; however, too often, limitations in medical education articles are overlooked or reduced to simplistic and minimally relevant themes (e.g., single institution study, use of self-reported data, or small sample size) [ 1 ]. This issue is prominent in other fields of inquiry in medicine as well. For example, despite the clinical implications, medical studies often fail to discuss how limitations could have affected the study findings and interpretations [ 2 ]. Further, observational research often fails to remind readers of the fundamental limitation inherent in the study design, which is the inability to attribute causation [ 3 ]. By reporting generic limitations or omitting them altogether, researchers miss opportunities to fully communicate the relevance of their work, illustrate how their work advances a larger field under study, and suggest potential areas for further investigation.

Goals of presenting limitations

Medical education scholarship should provide empirical evidence that deepens our knowledge and understanding of education [ 4 , 5 ], informs educational practice and process, [ 6 , 7 ] and serves as a forum for educating other researchers [ 8 ]. Providing study limitations is indeed an important part of this scholarly process. Without them, research consumers are pressed to fully grasp the potential exclusion areas or other biases that may affect the results and conclusions provided [ 9 ]. Study limitations should leave the reader thinking about opportunities to engage in prospective improvements [ 9 – 11 ] by presenting gaps in the current research and extant literature, thereby cultivating other researchers’ curiosity and interest in expanding the line of scholarly inquiry [ 9 ].

Presenting study limitations is also an ethical element of scientific inquiry [ 12 ]. It ensures transparency of both the research and the researchers [ 10 , 13 , 14 ], as well as provides transferability [ 15 ] and reproducibility of methods. Presenting limitations also supports proper interpretation and validity of the findings [ 16 ]. A study’s limitations should place research findings within their proper context to ensure readers are fully able to discern the credibility of a study’s conclusion, and can generalize findings appropriately [ 16 ].

Why some authors may fail to present limitations

As Price and Murnan [ 8 ] note, there may be overriding reasons why researchers do not sufficiently report the limitations of their study. For example, authors may not fully understand the importance and implications of their study’s limitations or assume that not discussing them may increase the likelihood of publication. Word limits imposed by journals may also prevent authors from providing thorough descriptions of their study’s limitations [ 17 ]. Still another possible reason for excluding limitations is a diffusion of responsibility in which some authors may incorrectly assume that the journal editor is responsible for identifying limitations. Regardless of reason or intent, researchers have an obligation to the academic community to present complete and honest study limitations.

A guide to presenting limitations

The presentation of limitations should describe the potential limitations, explain the implication of the limitations, provide possible alternative approaches, and describe steps taken to mitigate the limitations. Too often, authors only list the potential limitations, without including these other important elements.

Describe the limitations

When describing limitations authors should identify the limitation type to clearly introduce the limitation and specify the origin of the limitation. This helps to ensure readers are able to interpret and generalize findings appropriately. Here we outline various limitation types that can occur at different stages of the research process.

Study design

Some study limitations originate from conscious choices made by the researcher (also known as delimitations) to narrow the scope of the study [ 1 , 8 , 18 ]. For example, the researcher may have designed the study for a particular age group, sex, race, ethnicity, geographically defined region, or some other attribute that would limit to whom the findings can be generalized. Such delimitations involve conscious exclusionary and inclusionary decisions made during the development of the study plan, which may represent a systematic bias intentionally introduced into the study design or instrument by the researcher [ 8 ]. The clear description and delineation of delimitations and limitations will assist editors and reviewers in understanding any methodological issues.

Data collection

Study limitations can also be introduced during data collection. An unintentional consequence of human subjects research is the potential of the researcher to influence how participants respond to their questions. Even when appropriate methods for sampling have been employed, some studies remain limited by the use of data collected only from participants who decided to enrol in the study (self-selection bias) [ 11 , 19 ]. In some cases, participants may provide biased input by responding to questions they believe are favourable to the researcher rather than their authentic response (social desirability bias) [ 20 – 22 ]. Participants may influence the data collected by changing their behaviour when they are knowingly being observed (Hawthorne effect) [ 23 ]. Researchers—in their role as an observer—may also bias the data they collect by allowing a first impression of the participant to be influenced by a single characteristic or impression of another characteristic either unfavourably (horns effect) or favourably (halo effort) [ 24 ].

Data analysis

Study limitations may arise as a consequence of the type of statistical analysis performed. Some studies may not follow the basic tenets of inferential statistical analyses when they use convenience sampling (i.e. non-probability sampling) rather than employing probability sampling from a target population [ 19 ]. Another limitation that can arise during statistical analyses occurs when studies employ unplanned post-hoc data analyses that were not specified before the initial analysis [ 25 ]. Unplanned post-hoc analysis may lead to statistical relationships that suggest associations but are no more than coincidental findings [ 23 ]. Therefore, when unplanned post-hoc analyses are conducted, this should be clearly stated to allow the reader to make proper interpretation and conclusions—especially when only a subset of the original sample is investigated [ 23 ].

Study results

The limitations of any research study will be rooted in the validity of its results—specifically threats to internal or external validity [ 8 ]. Internal validity refers to reliability or accuracy of the study results [ 26 ], while external validity pertains to the generalizability of results from the study’s sample to the larger, target population [ 8 ].

Examples of threats to internal validity include: effects of events external to the study (history), changes in participants due to time instead of the studied effect (maturation), systematic reduction in participants related to a feature of the study (attrition), changes in participant responses due to repeatedly measuring participants (testing effect), modifications to the instrument (instrumentality) and selecting participants based on extreme scores that will regress towards the mean in repeat tests (regression to the mean) [ 27 ].

Threats to external validity include factors that might inhibit generalizability of results from the study’s sample to the larger, target population [ 8 , 27 ]. External validity is challenged when results from a study cannot be generalized to its larger population or to similar populations in terms of the context, setting, participants and time [ 18 ]. Therefore, limitations should be made transparent in the results to inform research consumers of any known or potentially hidden biases that may have affected the study and prevent generalization beyond the study parameters.

Explain the implication(s) of each limitation

Authors should include the potential impact of the limitations (e.g., likelihood, magnitude) [ 13 ] as well as address specific validity implications of the results and subsequent conclusions [ 16 , 28 ]. For example, self-reported data may lead to inaccuracies (e.g. due to social desirability bias) which threatens internal validity [ 19 ]. Even a researcher’s inappropriate attribution to a characteristic or outcome (e.g., stereotyping) can overemphasize (either positively or negatively) unrelated characteristics or outcomes (halo or horns effect) and impact the internal validity [ 24 ]. Participants’ awareness that they are part of a research study can also influence outcomes (Hawthorne effect) and limit external validity of findings [ 23 ]. External validity may also be threatened should the respondents’ propensity for participation be correlated with the substantive topic of study, as data will be biased and not represent the population of interest (self-selection bias) [ 29 ]. Having this explanation helps readers interpret the results and generalize the applicability of the results for their own setting.

Provide potential alternative approaches and explanations

Often, researchers use other studies’ limitations as the first step in formulating new research questions and shaping the next phase of research. Therefore, it is important for readers to understand why potential alternative approaches (e.g. approaches taken by others exploring similar topics) were not taken. In addition to alternative approaches, authors can also present alternative explanations for their own study’s findings [ 13 ]. This information is valuable coming from the researcher because of the direct, relevant experience and insight gained as they conducted the study. The presentation of alternative approaches represents a major contribution to the scholarly community.

Describe steps taken to minimize each limitation

No research design is perfect and free from explicit and implicit biases; however various methods can be employed to minimize the impact of study limitations. Some suggested steps to mitigate or minimize the limitations mentioned above include using neutral questions, randomized response technique, force choice items, or self-administered questionnaires to reduce respondents’ discomfort when answering sensitive questions (social desirability bias) [ 21 ]; using unobtrusive data collection measures (e.g., use of secondary data) that do not require the researcher to be present (Hawthorne effect) [ 11 , 30 ]; using standardized rubrics and objective assessment forms with clearly defined scoring instructions to minimize researcher bias, or making rater adjustments to assessment scores to account for rater tendencies (halo or horns effect) [ 24 ]; or using existing data or control groups (self-selection bias) [ 11 , 30 ]. When appropriate, researchers should provide sufficient evidence that demonstrates the steps taken to mitigate limitations as part of their study design [ 13 ].

In conclusion, authors may be limiting the impact of their research by neglecting or providing abbreviated and generic limitations. We present several examples of limitations to consider; however, this should not be considered an exhaustive list nor should these examples be added to the growing list of generic and overused limitations. Instead, careful thought should go into presenting limitations after research has concluded and the major findings have been described. Limitations help focus the reader on key findings, therefore it is important to only address the most salient limitations of the study [ 17 , 28 ] related to the specific research problem, not general limitations of most studies [ 1 ]. It is important not to minimize the limitations of study design or results. Rather, results, including their limitations, must help readers draw connections between current research and the extant literature.

The quality and rigor of our research is largely defined by our limitations [ 31 ]. In fact, one of the top reasons reviewers report recommending acceptance of medical education research manuscripts involves limitations—specifically how the study’s interpretation accounts for its limitations [ 32 ]. Therefore, it is not only best for authors to acknowledge their study’s limitations rather than to have them identified by an editor or reviewer, but proper framing and presentation of limitations can actually increase the likelihood of acceptance. Perhaps, these issues could be ameliorated if academic and research organizations adopted policies and/or expectations to guide authors in proper description of limitations.

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Limited by our limitations

Nikki L. Bibler Zaidi

Introduction

Goals of presenting limitations

Why some authors may fail to present limitations

A guide to presenting limitations

Describe the limitations

Study design

Data collection

Data analysis

Study results

Explain the implication(s) of each limitation

Provide potential alternative approaches and explanations

Describe steps taken to minimize each limitation

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