What Words Cannot Capture: The Limits of Rational Discourse in Understanding Reality

I spend much of my time engaged in rational discourse. As Chair of The Philosophical Society: Oxford, I facilitate discussions where arguments must be clear, premises explicit, and conclusions logically sound. As a researcher at Cambridge, I write papers where every claim requires justification and every inference must follow necessarily from what came before. This is the world of rational discourse, and I value it deeply.

Yet I've also sat in shamanic ceremony where knowledge was transmitted through ritual, song, and direct experience. I've journeyed in altered states where understanding arrived not through linear argument but through symbol, vision, and felt sense. I've stood in stone circles in the English countryside at dawn, experiencing something profound that evaporates the moment I try to put it into propositional language.

These experiences have led me to a curious conclusion: rational discourse is an extraordinarily powerful tool for understanding reality, but it has inherent limitations that we rarely acknowledge. And these limitations matter, not just for spiritual seekers or artists, but for anyone interested in what we can genuinely know about the nature of reality.

Not all feelings can be adequately expressed with language

The Hidden Assumptions of Rational Discourse

Let's begin by examining what rational discourse actually is and what it assumes about reality.

Rational discourse operates through language, specifically, through propositions that can be evaluated as true or false. It proceeds by analysis (breaking complex things into simpler parts), logical inference (deriving conclusions from premises), and argumentation (offering reasons for claims). This mode of engagement assumes several things:

1. That reality can be adequately represented in propositional language

2. That meaning can be made fully explicit and unambiguous

3. That understanding proceeds linearly from premise to conclusion

4. That the subject-object distinction (the knower separate from the known) is fundamental

5. That third-person perspective provides the most reliable access to truth

   
   

These assumptions have been remarkably productive. They've enabled science, technology, legal systems, and philosophical progress. But what if they're not universally valid? What if there are aspects of reality that resist this framework?

When Language Meets Its Limits

Consider the colour red. I can give you the wavelength (approximately 700 nanometers), describe the neurophysiology of colour perception, explain cultural associations, and analyse the semantics of colour terms across languages. All of this is valuable rational discourse about red.

But none of it conveys what red is in the experiential sense - the quale, the subjective character of seeing red. If you'd never experienced colour, no amount of rational discourse could give you that knowledge. The philosopher Frank Jackson's famous 'Mary's Room' thought experiment makes this point elegantly: even complete propositional knowledge about colour doesn't equate to the knowledge gained through direct experience.

This isn't just an interesting puzzle for philosophers; it points to a fundamental limitation. There are aspects of reality that can be experienced but not fully captured in the propositions of rational discourse.

Or consider music. As a professional pianist, I can engage in sophisticated rational discourse about music theory, harmonic analysis, and compositional technique. Yet the meaning of a Beethoven sonata isn't exhausted by, or even primarily located in, such analysis. The music means something that happens in the experience of it, something that rational discourse can point toward but never fully articulate.

The Problem of Ineffability

Many of the most significant human experiences seem to have an ineffable quality: they resist being fully translated into words. Mystics across traditions speak of encounters with the divine that cannot be adequately described. People report profound experiences with psychedelics that they struggle to communicate. Even everyday experiences like falling in love or the grief of loss have a depth that language seems to betray.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) with the famous line: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." But this raises a troubling question: if the most meaningful aspects of human experience are ineffable, does rational discourse exclude itself from addressing what matters most?

In my shamanic practice, I regularly encounter this limitation. When someone experiences a soul retrieval or a profound journey, they often say something like, "I can't put it into words, but I know something within me has shifted." This isn't woolly thinking or lack of education, as some of my clients are academics themselves. It's an honest recognition that the transformation occurred at a level that rational discourse cannot reach.

The Paradox of Analysis

There's a deeper problem lurking here, one that philosophers call the paradox of analysis. When we analyse something by breaking it down into components and relationships, we change it. We step back from immediate experience and adopt a reflective, distanced stance. This is necessary for rational discourse, but it's also a transformation of what we're trying to understand.

Think about analysing a joke. You can explain the structure, identify the incongruity, trace the cultural references, and describe the social dynamics. But in doing so, you've killed what makes it funny. The humour exists in the immediate, unreflective experience, and analysis necessarily moves us out of that space.

Similarly, when I analyse my experience in meditation or shamanic journey, I'm no longer having that experience. I'm having a different experience, the experience of analysing. The map is not the territory and rational discourse gives us maps, not territories.

This isn't to say analysis is worthless, as we know that maps are extremely useful! But we must recognize that we're always dealing with representations, abstractions, and conceptual models, never with the raw immediacy of reality itself.

The Limits of Subject-Object Dualism

Rational discourse typically assumes a clear separation between the knower (subject) and the known (object). I am here, examining something out there. This framework works brilliantly for many purposes. It's the foundation of scientific objectivity.

But what about states of consciousness where this distinction dissolves? In deep meditation, in mystical experience, in moments of complete absorption in music or nature, many people report a sense of non-dual awareness where the subject-object boundary becomes porous or disappears entirely.

You might object: "Those are just subjective experiences, not objective reality." But notice what you've done. You have used the very framework of subject-object dualism to dismiss experiences that challenge it. This is a bit like using a ruler to measure, whether rulers are the only valid measuring tools or not.

My research into quantum entanglement has taught me something fascinating: even in physics, the observer cannot be cleanly separated from the observed. The act of measurement affects the system being measured. Reality at the quantum level doesn't respect our tidy subject-object distinctions.

This doesn't mean 'consciousness creates reality' or other popular misunderstandings of quantum mechanics. It means that the assumption of clean separation between knower and known, so central to rational discourse, may not be as fundamental as we thought.

Embodied and Tacit Knowledge

The philosopher Michael Polanyi introduced the concept of 'tacit knowledge', knowledge we possess but cannot fully articulate. A master craftsperson knows how to shape wood, how to sense when a joint is right, but often cannot put this knowledge into explicit instructions. An experienced clinician can sometimes 'just know' something is wrong with a patient, even before test results confirm it.

This isn't mysterious. It is embodied knowledge, patterns recognised through years of practice, integrated at a level below conscious articulation. But it poses a challenge for rational discourse, which demands explicit articulation.

In shamanic practice, much knowledge is transmitted this way: through practice, through embodied experience, through what might be called apprenticeship rather than instruction. When I trained with Andean wisdom keepers and Norse shamans, I learned not primarily through rational explanation, but through participation, observation, and direct experience.

This knowledge is real and reliable. Shamanic traditions have sophisticated epistemologies that have been tested over thousands of years. But it doesn't translate easily into the propositional format that rational discourse requires.

The Role of Metaphor and Symbol

Here's something curious: even the most rigorous rational discourse relies heavily on metaphor. We speak of 'grasping' ideas, 'building' arguments, 'foundations' of knowledge, logical 'steps', and 'paths' of reasoning. These spatial and physical metaphors structure how we think, but they're not literal.

Cognitive scientists like George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have shown that human cognition is fundamentally metaphorical. We understand abstract concepts through mappings from more concrete, embodied experience. This suggests that even our most 'pure' rational thought is grounded in something more basic - embodied, experiential, and non-rational.

Symbols go even deeper. A symbol isn't just a sign that points to something else; it participates in what it represents. The cross for Christians isn't merely a reminder of crucifixion; it somehow makes that reality present. The mandala in Buddhist practice isn't just a picture; it's a doorway to understanding.

Rational discourse can analyse symbols, but it cannot replicate their function. The meaning of a symbol is accessed through contemplation, through allowing it to work on consciousness, not through discursive reasoning about it.

Different Questions Require Different Methods

I want to be careful here. I'm not saying rational discourse is bad or that we should abandon it. I'm saying it has limits, and those limits become problematic when we treat rational discourse as the only legitimate way to understand reality.

Consider these different types of questions:

Empirical questions (What is the boiling point of water?) → Best answered through experiment and rational analysis

Logical questions (Does this conclusion follow from these premises?) → Best answered through rational discourse

Phenomenological questions (What is the structure of conscious experience?) → Require introspection and careful description

Existential questions (How should I live? What makes life meaningful?) → Require wisdom, reflection, lived experience, and often engagement with narrative and tradition

Questions of ultimate reality (What is the nature of consciousness? Is there something transcendent?) → May require contemplative practice, mystical experience, or philosophical speculation that acknowledges its own limits

The mistake is trying to force all questions into the format that works for empirical and logical questions. It's the old problem of looking for your keys under the streetlight because that's where the light is, rather than where you dropped your keys.

Toward a More Humble Discourse

So where does this leave us? If rational discourse has inherent limitations in understanding reality, what should we do?

First, we need epistemic humility. Rational discourse is a powerful tool, but it's not omnipotent. There are genuine insights available through contemplative practice, through altered states of consciousness, through art and music, through embodied knowing, and through direct mystical experience.

This doesn't mean uncritical acceptance of every claim made in these domains. It means recognising them as legitimate ways of knowing that complement, rather than compete with, rational discourse.

Second, we need better integration. The ideal isn't to choose between rational discourse and other ways of knowing, but to develop facility with multiple modes of understanding. A scientist who also meditates, a philosopher who also engages in spiritual practice, a shaman who also values clear thinking - these aren't contradictions but examples of wholeness.

Third, we need new forms of discourse that can point toward what they cannot fully capture. This is what poetry does, what art does, what contemplative writing does. It's what I'm attempting in this very essay by using rational discourse to gesture toward its own limits, like a finger pointing at the moon.

Living the Question

My dual life as Cambridge researcher and shamanic practitioner isn't a compartmentalised existence. It's an ongoing experiment in holding multiple ways of knowing together. When I engage with plasma physics and quantum entanglement, I use rigorous rational discourse. When I facilitate healing or journey to non-ordinary reality, I engage different faculties of intuition, symbolic knowing, embodied awareness.

Neither invalidates the other. Each reveals aspects of reality that the other cannot access.

The great physicist Niels Bohr reportedly kept a horseshoe above his door for luck. When asked if he believed in such superstition, he replied, "Of course not, but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it." This quip, whether apocryphal or not, captures something important: reality is stranger and more multiple than our frameworks allow.

Perhaps the deepest limitation of rational discourse is this: it tends to create a world made of words, concepts, and arguments, when reality is primarily made of something else. Something experienced, lived, felt, encountered. Something that precedes our talking about it and exceeds what our talking can capture.

The question isn't whether to use rational discourse. Of course, we should use rational discourse, when appropriate. The question is whether we can remain open to what it cannot grasp, whether we can develop other faculties alongside our reasoning, and whether we can hold our maps lightly, knowing they are not the territory.

This essay itself is a strange thing, an attempt to use rational discourse to articulate why rational discourse isn't enough, like the snake eating its tail. But perhaps that's fitting. Perhaps the best use of rational discourse is sometimes to recognise its own boundaries and invite us toward what lies beyond them.

What has been your experience with the limits of words and rational explanation? Have you encountered aspects of reality that resist being captured in language? I'd be curious to hear your reflections. You can share in the comments or reach out directly at kathy@magicinharmony.com.