Doubt

What Dominique Pagani says

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 plus56.

1. 1#2.4 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?10 Mar 2016 · 44:14
2. 2#2.4 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?10 Mar 2016 · 51:53
3. 3Dialectiques de l'hésitation et de la décision13 Nov 2022 · 58:03
4. 4Dialectiques de l'hésitation et de la décision13 Nov 2022 · 28:52
5. 59 #21 Science et/ou philosophie de "l'Intelligence Artificielle"12 May 2021 · 1:36:16
6. 69 #21 Science et/ou philosophie de "l'Intelligence Artificielle"12 May 2021 · 1:40:21

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