  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?
