But the flip side of that is that we don't know that it is there either until we've actually hit the barrier, and it makes no sense at all to assume when going into a new avenue of study that it's impossible to carry to a successful conclusion. Such an assumption would be a show-stopper. If the limit is there, we'll find it. The hard way.
It is even more uncertain: how do we know that a barrier is a barrier? How do we know that we NEVER EVER get to know the other side? All we can surely know is the possibilities that we experienced!
I am rather optimistic about mind research. As we try to build robots, we may conclude that most key qualities (including bias in strength of earlier of first experiences, say) are kind of necessary to a cybernetic system of certain complexity level.
On the other hand, will the knowledge of human mind would necessarily be spread without reservations and just as openly as the knowledge in fundamental physics? Couldn't that knowledge be "worth" more restricted?! We even have commercialization of "standard" scientific research under way.
The NLP (Neuro-lingquistic programming) development is interesting. The NLP guys do not want themselves to register their discipline as science by official institutions. Either they do not wish to bother with merely academic status (and perhaps "open source" standards), or prefer to make money - it depends how cynically you want to see them. Their approach is pragmatical foremost, but they possibly have much interesting knowledge and experience, and there is a vague philosophy behind. If someone would wish, some interesting science could be made of that, I think.
