Epistemology

8 videos, newest first.

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches epistemology through the question that opens his 2021 cycle: how can sciences of history be real? This question reverses the one Kant asked about Newton's physics1. He distinguishes the natural sciences, governed by the cause-effect pair and the model y = f(x), from the sciences of history, governed by the sense-sign pair, in which the sign is immanent to the sense2. He contrasts the question "what is it?", addressed to a mute object, with the Socratic "what do you call?". He argues that extending determinism to the subject abolishes freedom, and with it the question "what ought I to do?"3 4. He traces Aristotle's philosophical imperialism, the independence that the sciences gain one after another, and then scientistic imperialism5. He draws on Kant, Spinoza, Koyré, Bachelard and Freud, as well as on Marx, who in his view made the sciences of history possible. He uses Wagner's Ring as a model of this rigour. He concludes with the enigma raised by Einstein: statements drawn from language alone apply to the world6.

Introduction produced automatically from the 8 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.

The 8 videos

Season 9.2

9 #20 From SIGNAL to SIGN • Einstein

28 Apr 2021

How can one cross the abyss between the natural sciences and the historical sciences, and how is it that statements drawn from language alone apply to the world?

Questions and answers

Wagner and his interpreters, Approaching Clouscard, Marx = Theseus? • Philosophical Q&A • Pagani

31 Mar 2021

How should one answer public questions on interpretations of Wagner's Ring, on how to enter Clouscard's work, on political philosophy, and on what Marx brings to the reading of Phèdre?

Season 9.2

9 #16 How can sciences of history be real?

4 Mar 2021

How can sciences of history be real, and how has the relation of the sciences to philosophy evolved since Aristotle's philosophical imperialism?

Season 9.2

9 #14 How can sciences of history be real?

5 Feb 2021

How can sciences of history be real, if the determinism of the natural sciences seems to exclude freedom?

Season 9.2

9 #13 How can sciences of history be real?

29 Jan 2021

How can sciences of history have a rigor with nothing to envy in the hard sciences, and what does Wagner's Das Rheingold show on this subject?

Season 9.2

9 #12 How can sciences of history be real?

14 Jan 2021

How can understanding, the faculty of the sciences and of the "if… then," axiologically neutral, be put to the service of evil, and how does Wagner's Das Rheingold show this?

Season 9.2

9 #11 How can sciences of history be real?

7 Jan 2021

How can sciences of history, that is, sciences of the human subject, attain a rigor really comparable to that of the sciences of nature?

Season 5.1

#5.3 bis FaceBookLive / Questions

13 Jan 2019

What distinguishes the philosophical question "what do you call...?" from the scientific question "what is it?", and how does the sign-meaning pair separate from the cause-effect pair?