Conjecture

Abstract

With phenomena remote from easy descriptive characterization and where our access to the relevant features is difficult, we confront questions whose resolution calls for considerable speculation. Thus, the nature of physical reality in the first instant after the big bang—let alone prior to it—is bound to be something highly speculative—as is the condition of the human race in the very distant future. Issues that transcend the reach of common experience become increasingly speculative and conjectural—and thereby pose cognitively risky issues.