ALGORITHMS THAT THINK, HUMANS WHO DOUBT: ARE WE TEACHING MACHINES TO THINK, OR FORGETTING HOW TO QUESTION?

Abstract

This paper reflects on the tension between the Cartesian conception of thought as doubt and the attribution of “thought” to Artificial Intelligence, drawing on Descartes’s methodical doubt and cogito, read through Gilson and commentators such as Nascimento and Braga e Chaves, including the Cartesian criterion of language as a distinctive mark of thought as opposed to that of an automaton. The argumentative framework of this paper links the centrality of questioning in Descartes to contemporary cognitive mechanization. It concludes that algorithms do not think, but that the real risk is that humans will begin to think like machines by abandoning the practices of doubt. The contribution lies in shifting the fundamental question—that is, not asking what Artificial Intelligence will be, but rather what we become when we accept it without question.