Doubt

doute

Worked through in 3 videos · 6 passages.

Play the 6 passages in a row Make a board

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches doubt first through Descartes. He presents methodical doubt as holding to be false whatever is merely probable. In his view this gesture answers a need for certainty and is not a matter of scepticism1. He stresses that no conclusive sign allows us to tell waking from dreaming: the sensory criterion collapses, and empiricism with it2. He reads the first Meditation as an inventory of everything that can be called into doubt, up to the first certainty, that of the cogito3. In 2022 he makes doubt a fundamental category in Descartes, whom he describes as a man of action, and he links it to hesitation and to language4. In a 2021 session on artificial intelligence, he holds that doubting presupposes a consciousness and that the machine does not doubt. Doubting, he adds, is not "bugging": what is a minus with respect to mechanical perfection is in fact a plus5 6.

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 11 · 13 Nov 2022Dialectics of hesitation and decision

28:52Doubt, a fundamental category for Descartes, a man of action, is linked to hesitation and to language.
58:03The first Meditation takes stock of what can be called into doubt, up to the first certainty of the cogito.

Cycle 9.2 · 12 May 2021#9.21 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence”

1:36:16Doubting presupposes a consciousness; the machine does not doubt.
1:40:21Doubting is not bugging; doubt, a minus relative to mechanical perfection, is a plus.

Cycle 2 · 10 Mar 2016#2.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

44:14Methodical doubt: deem false everything that is merely probable, out of a need for certainty and not out of skepticism.
51:53There is no conclusive sign between waking and dreaming: the sensible criterion collapses, and with it empiricism.