Doubt: On Sparring and Sociability

Abstract: "What good are the humanities?" To practical people who ask this question, my answer will sound paradoxical: The humanities are good for training a taste for doubt. All research starts with doubt, but mostly to resolve it. Humanists don't care as much about answers as about the activity of thinking. They let doubt linger and invite interpretation, conversation, reflection, human contact. The humanities promote sociability and support democracy. If people don't enjoy talking together, hearing various opinions, and sparring sometimes for the sheer fun of it, democracy declines. When rationality and AI eliminate doubt, we become indifferent to differences of perspective, experience, and to each other.