Guan Paradox and the Boundaries of Knowledge: A Meta-Inquiry

Paradoxes, as statements leading to contradictory conclusions from seemingly true premises, are not merely intellectual challenges but catalysts revealing intrinsic limitations in our understanding or existence itself. This paper aims to construct a "meta-Guan-paradox" framework to offer a unified understanding of the fundamental causes of the vast majority of significant paradoxes. To this end, we draw upon both Chinese and Western philosophical wisdom to originally introduce the concept of "Guan"—a transcendental, primordial mode of existence that generates, experiences, and constitutes its own world. From the essence of "Guan," we derive its inherent "threefold inaccessibility": "Guan's self-inaccessibility" (at the entity-internal level), "Guan's mutual inaccessibility" (at the intersubjective level), and "Guan's holistic inaccessibility" (at the ultimate systemic level). This paper argues that these three inaccessibilities constitute a paradoxical state that cannot be fully distinguished, serving as the fundamental source of all paradoxes. By re-examining classical paradoxes (across logical, mathematical, philosophical, and physical domains), and by proposing a series of new era and original paradoxes (e.g., AI consciousness, digital immortality, cognitive puzzles), we reveal how they manifest as structural contradictions encountered by "Guan" when attempting to "Guan its own Guan," "Guan its shared Guan," and "Guan its entire Guan." Particularly, this paper establishes the "Observer Isolation Paradox" as the ultimate manifestation of "Guan's holistic inaccessibility" at the existential level, arguing for its universality and inherent resilience to refutation. This exploration culminates in the conceptualization of "All Guan," the ultimate paradox that embodies the profound, mutually constitutive relationship where "Guan is the root of paradoxes, and paradox is also the root of Guan." Ultimately, this paper posits that paradoxes are not intellectual flaws or solvable problems, but inherent characteristics of the boundaries of knowledge. They objectively prevent a system from transcending its fundamental limitations, thereby ensuring meaningful eternal expansion and deeper understanding. Embracing this "unknowability" is not an abandonment of understanding, but a more mature and comprehensive epistemology that acknowledges our inherent perspective as observers within existence and continues to explore on this basis. This inquiry ultimately reveals that truth is intrinsically rooted in paradox, with "All Guan" serving as its most profound and unintelligible manifestation.