Expanding scientific knowledge or sensory capacity would not overcome the mediated nature of all cognition.

Its bears emphasis that Mill’s argument about the limits of human cognition does not depend on our current state of scientific knowledge—or indeed upon the particular sense faculties we possess. Even if we had extra sense faculties or could come to perceive in new ways, he notes, all knowledge that would still be “merely phaenomenal” (Examination, IX: 8). Cognition, in any sentient creature must be mediated by some method of cognising—and if even if we came to possess new ways of cognizing the w