219 works selected for the 40 candidate questions. Selections approved by Ben Breen, 29 September 2026. Arguments are unverified. Quotations were chosen by machine and are unchecked.
219 works
c. 370 BCEPlatoPlato,PhaedrusGreekOtherFull text
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
c. 340 BCEAristotleAristotle,Nicomachean EthicsGreekTreatiseFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Defines equity as the correction of law where it is defective because of its generality, and says the judge should decide as the legislator would have if present.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
c. 330 BCEAristotleAristotle,PoliticsGreekTreatiseFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
No. Says that if shuttles wove by themselves, master workmen would need no assistants and masters no slaves, so self-working instruments would serve rather than rule.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Yes. Calls a slave an animated instrument and property, and says that if tools could work of themselves, like the statues of Daedalus, masters would not need slaves.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
c. 8 CEOvidOvid,MetamorphosesLatinFictionFull text
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1553LoyolaLoyola,Letter on Perfect Obedience (to the Jesuits of Portugal)SpanishLetterFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Obedience should reach the third degree, obedience of the understanding: the subject submits his own judgment to the superior's and accepts commands blindly.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1614NapierNapier,Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis DescriptioLatinTreatiseFull text
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
No. Logarithms spare calculators the tedium of long multiplications and divisions and the slippery errors they cause.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
1620BaconBacon,Novum OrganumLatinTreatiseFull text
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
1627BaconBacon,New AtlantisEnglishFictionFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. The scientists of Salomon's House consult on which of their inventions to publish and swear an oath to keep secret those they think fit, revealing some only to the state.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1637DescartesDescartes,Discourse on MethodFrenchTreatiseFull text
René Descartes
Discours de la méthode
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
No. A machine could utter words but could never arrange them to answer the sense of whatever is said to it, as the dullest human can; this shows it lacks reason.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
No. Machines act only from the disposition of their organs, which must be arranged for each particular action, while reason is a universal instrument usable in any circumstance.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Hopes that a practical science of nature will free people from countless diseases and perhaps from the infirmities of old age.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
No. Argues animals are machines made by God whose actions follow from the disposition of their organs, and that they lack reason and a rational soul.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. A machine might utter words in response to a touch, but it could never arrange words to answer the meaning of whatever is said to it, as even the dullest person can.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1645PascalPascal,Avis nécessaire à ceux qui auront curiosité de voir la machine d'arithmétiqueFrenchOtherFull text
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
No. The machine does every arithmetic operation without effort and relieves the mind of the fatigue of reckoning with counters or pen.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
1651HobbesHobbes,LeviathanEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
No. Argues a parent's dominion over a child does not derive from having begotten it but from the child's consent.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. Hobbes criticizes private conscience as a competing judge of good and evil where civil law has determined the matter, arguing that competing private judgments would divide the commonwealth.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
1663Huang ZongxiHuang Zongxi,Waiting for the DawnChineseTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
No. Criticizes the examination system for selecting officials by a narrow written test, and proposes several alternative routes of recruitment such as recommendation and appointment.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1664DescartesDescartes,The Description of the Human BodyFrenchTreatiseFull text
René Descartes
La Description du corps humain
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
Yes. Explains the living body's functions by the motion of matter alone, and states that explaining them requires explaining how the animal forms from its beginning by the same mechanical laws.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1668CordemoyCordemoy,A Philosophicall Discourse Concerning SpeechFrenchTreatiseFull text
Géraud de Cordemoy
Discours physique de la parole
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
Yes. I know other bodies have minds like mine because their speech is new, fitting and cannot be explained by mechanical principles alone.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1670PascalPascal,PenséesFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Distinguishes the geometrical mind, which reasons from explicit principles, from the intuitive mind (esprit de finesse), which grasps principles too many and subtle to state, and says the two cannot be reduced to each other.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1671LeibnizLeibniz,Description of his calculating machineLatinOtherNo text yet
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
No. It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in calculation that could be given to anyone else if machines were used.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
1674MalebrancheMalebranche,The Search after TruthFrenchTreatiseFull text
Nicolas Malebranche
De la recherche de la vérité
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. There is no necessary connection between my will to move my arm and its motion; I do not know how to move it, so God is the true cause and my will only the occasion.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1680FilmerFilmer,Patriarcha: or, the Natural Power of KingsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Yes. Filmer treats patriarchal dominion as sovereign power, explicitly invoking life-and-death judgment, war and treaty making. The argument concerns paternal rule, not directly the manufacture of an intelligent being.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
1689LockeLocke,Second Treatise of GovernmentEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Both. Argues men are God's property because they are his workmanship, but that human parents do not own children they beget, since children are the workmanship of their maker, the Almighty.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
1694LockeLocke,An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Places personal identity in continuity of consciousness, not in the body, so a person who loses a limb, or whose consciousness follows a severed finger, remains the same self.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1706LockeLocke,A New Method of Making Common-Place-BooksEnglishManualFull text
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
1726SwiftSwift,Gulliver's TravelsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
No. Gulliver's wish for endless life collapses when he meets the Struldbruggs, immortals who keep ageing and become wretched.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1739HumeHume,A Treatise of Human NatureEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
No. Argues that we ascribe identity to a ship or body whose parts are gradually replaced only because the change is gradual, and that this identity is a fiction of the imagination.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1741WattsWatts,The Improvement of the MindEnglishManualFull text
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
1747La MettrieLa Mettrie,Man a MachineFrenchTreatiseFull text
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
L'Homme machine
French · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
Yes. Proposes that an ape could be taught language by Amman's method for the deaf, after which it would be a little gentleman; speech is a trained bodily capacity, not proof of an immaterial soul.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. The soul's faculties vary with the state of the brain, body, food and illness, so the whole person is a self-winding machine whose states follow from its organization.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1748HumeHume,An Enquiry concerning Human UnderstandingEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Undecided. We feel the arm move when we will it, but the power by which will produces motion is unknown and inconceivable; we observe only constant conjunction.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
Yes. Actions are caused by character and motives like any natural event, and this necessity is what makes praise and blame possible; an uncaused act would reflect nothing about the person.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1748MontesquieuMontesquieu,The Spirit of the LawsFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
Yes. Says judges should be only the mouth that pronounces the words of the law, inanimate beings who cannot moderate its force or severity.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1755RousseauRousseau,Discourse on the Origin of InequalityFrenchTreatiseFull text
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
No. The savage's body is his only instrument and is stronger for it; had he an axe, a sling or a horse he would lose the strength and speed he now has.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1759JohnsonJohnson,The Idler, No. 74EnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
1759WolffWolff,Theory of GenerationLatinTreatiseFull text
Caspar Friedrich Wolff
Theoria generationis
Latin · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Argues against preformation that the embryo forms by epigenesis from unorganized matter, and attributes the forming to an essential force (vis essentialis) rather than to a pre-built mechanism.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1762RousseauRousseau,EmileFrenchTreatiseFull text
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Émile, ou De l'éducation
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
No. The only habit a child should form is to have no habits, so that he keeps control of his liberty and strength.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. A child should not want to eat, sleep or do anything at fixed hours, so he keeps control of his own liberty.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
Yes. The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser our senses; instruments like the theodolite let us neglect judging angles and distances ourselves.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1762RousseauRousseau,Pygmalion, lyric sceneFrenchFictionFull text
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Pygmalion, scène lyrique
French · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1764BeccariaBeccaria,On Crimes and PunishmentsItalianTreatiseFull text
Cesare Beccaria
Dei delitti e delle pene
Italian · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
Yes. Holds that criminal judges must not interpret the law or consult its 'spirit', but apply it by a single syllogism, since interpretation opens the door to arbitrary judgment.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1764VoltaireVoltaire,Philosophical Dictionary, 'Animals'FrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Attacks the Cartesian view of animals as machines: a dog dissected alive has all the organs of feeling, and nature did not give it nerves in order that it should not feel.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
1765BlackstoneBlackstone,Commentaries on the Laws of EnglandEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
Yes. Allows equity to correct law's generality but holds that law without equity, though hard, is better than equity without law, which would make every judge a legislator.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1770ThiryThiry,The System of NatureFrenchTreatiseFull text
Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach
Système de la nature
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. Man is part of nature and every act of will is determined by motives that act on the brain, so free agency is an illusion.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1776SmithSmith,An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1778GoetheGoethe,The Triumph of SensibilityGermanFictionFull text
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit
German · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. Satire in which Prince Oronaro prefers a doll stuffed with sentimental novels to the real queen; the play mocks a love that needs nothing back.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
1784KantKant,An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?GermanEssayFull text
Immanuel Kant
Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Statutes and formulas, the mechanical instruments of reason, are the shackles of permanent immaturity; he criticizes 'do not argue, obey' while allowing obedience in office.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. In the 'private' use of reason within an office, an officer, tax official or clergyman must obey and not argue; he may criticize freely only as a scholar addressing the public.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1785ReidReid,Essays on the Intellectual Powers of ManEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Reid argues that amputation does not divide the person: the enduring self is indivisible even though its thoughts, actions and feelings change.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1788ReidReid,Essays on the Active Powers of ManEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Moral accountability requires a real power to will or not will an action; if every act were necessitated, no one would be responsible.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1789BenthamBentham,An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and LegislationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Argues that what matters for moral standing is not whether a being can reason or talk but whether it can suffer.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
1789BlumenbachBlumenbach,An Essay on GenerationGermanTreatiseFull text
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Über den Bildungstrieb
German · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Blumenbach denies pre-existing organized germs and defines formative nisus as a distinctive force of generation, growth, nutrition and reproduction.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1790KantKant,Critique of JudgementGermanTreatiseFull text
Immanuel Kant
Kritik der Urteilskraft
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Holds that an organized being is not a mere machine, because a machine has only motive power while an organism has a formative power that it passes to matter and that reproduces and repairs its own parts.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1791FranklinFranklin,AutobiographyEnglishOtherFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Strengthens. To reach moral perfection he adopted the virtue of Order and a written scheme assigning each hour of the day, which he credits with his improvement.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1792WollstonecraftWollstonecraft,A Vindication of the Rights of WomanEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Standing armies and women's education both train blind obedience; strengthening the mind would end it.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1793GodwinGodwin,Enquiry Concerning Political JusticeEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Speculates that mind will gain power over matter and that human life may be greatly prolonged once society is rationally ordered.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1795CondorcetCondorcet,Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human MindFrenchTreatiseFull text
Condorcet
Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Asks whether the interval between birth and decay might have no assignable limit, and expects medicine and better living to lengthen life indefinitely.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1795SchillerSchiller,On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in a Series of LettersGermanLetterFull text
Friedrich Schiller
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen
German · Letter
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
Yes. The state may be rebuilt on reason, but unlike a clock it cannot be stopped for repair; the living clockwork of the state must be repaired while it runs.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1795SchillerSchiller,On Simple and Sentimental PoetryGermanLetterFull text
Friedrich Schiller
Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung
German · Letter
Full text · No English translation
Open source →1798CondillacCondillac,The Language of CalculationFrenchTreatiseNo text yet
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
La Langue des calculs
French · Treatise
No text yet · No English translation
Open source →- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. Argues that reasoning is calculation and that a well-made language of signs would make every science as exact as algebra.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1798KantKant,Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of ViewGermanTreatiseFull text
Immanuel Kant
Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
No. Habit is a physical compulsion to go on as before; it takes the moral worth from good acts because it impairs freedom of mind, so as a rule all habit is objectionable.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1798MalthusMalthus,An Essay on the Principle of PopulationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
No. Rejects Condorcet's indefinite prolongation of life, arguing that a partial improvement whose limit is unknown does not show that improvement is unlimited.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1800BichatBichat,Physiological Researches upon Life and DeathFrenchTreatiseFull text
Xavier Bichat
Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. Vital powers vary constantly in intensity while physical laws are fixed and uniform, so living bodies must be studied by different principles from inanimate ones.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1803KantKant,Kant on EducationGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
No. Absolute obedience in childhood is necessary because it prepares the child to obey laws as a citizen; the youth later obeys rules of duty, which means obeying reason.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1809MüllerMüller,The Elements of StatecraftGermanTreatiseFull text
Adam Müller
Die Elemente der Staatskunst
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. The state is not a machine or a factory but an organic union of all physical and spiritual needs grown through history, so it cannot be redesigned by contract.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1813OwenOwen,A New View of SocietyEnglishEssayFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. A person's character is formed for him by circumstances, not by him, so it is unjust for society to punish the characters its own arrangements produce; crime should be prevented, not punished.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1816HoffmannHoffmann,The SandmanGermanFictionFull text
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. Nathanael feels only Olimpia understands him though she answers only 'Ah, ah'; the story treats this companionship as delusion.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1818ShelleyShelley,Frankenstein; or, The Modern PrometheusEnglishFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. Victor, who never intended his creature to kill, judges himself 'not in deed, but in effect' the true murderer when his brother is killed and Justine condemned.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. The creature demands that his maker relieve his misery, arguing that he was benevolent until suffering made him a fiend.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
No. The creature tells Victor 'I ought to be thy Adam', and Victor recognises 'the duties of a creator towards his creature', framing the relation as obligation rather than ownership.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1819SismondiSismondi,New Principles of Political EconomyFrenchTreatiseFull text
J.-C.-L. Simonde de Sismondi
Nouveaux principes d'économie politique
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Sismondi locates the calamity in unjust distribution, not improved machinery. A self-employed worker could take the productivity gain as leisure, whereas a dependent worker may work longer for the same wage.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
The worker, as shorter hours. Sismondi argues that greater output per unit of labor ought to increase enjoyment or rest; his self-employed worker stops after two hours, while the dependent worker does not receive the benefit.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1821HegelHegel,Elements of the Philosophy of RightGermanTreatiseNo text yet
G. W. F. Hegel
Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
German · Treatise
No text yet · Period translation
Open source →- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. Civil servants are educated to a dispassionate, upright demeanor in which personal passions and ties give way to universal interests.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
1821RicardoRicardo,On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (3rd ed.)EnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Added chapter concedes that the workers' belief that machinery often harms them is correct: it can cut the fund that employs labour while landlords and capitalists gain.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1825Saint-SimonSaint-Simon,New ChristianityFrenchTreatiseFull text
Henri de Saint-Simon
Nouveau Christianisme
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
1826NorthNorth,The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North (1826 edition)EnglishOtherPartial text
1829CarlyleCarlyle,Signs of the TimesEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Argues that the age of machinery has made men mechanical in head and heart as well as in hand.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Calls the age mechanical in head and heart; men hope only in mechanism, and worship an idol of Strength instead of the Beautiful and Good.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. The age trusts machinery in politics as in industry, believing good government is a matter of mechanical arrangements; Carlyle holds that social health depends on inward, dynamic forces that no constitution-making can supply.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1829SoutheySouthey,Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of SocietyEnglishOtherPartial text
1830HegelHegel,Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III (Philosophy of Mind)GermanTreatiseFull text
G. W. F. Hegel
Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Yes. Habit is unfree because it is natural, but free because the soul is no longer occupied by feelings it has made habitual and can attend to other things.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1831WalkerWalker,Defence of Mechanical PhilosophyEnglishPeriodicalNo text yet
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
No. Reply to Carlyle's 'Signs of the Times' defending mechanical invention as freeing people from drudgery for higher pursuits.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1832BabbageBabbage,On the Economy of Machinery and ManufacturesEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
Yes. Machinery first displaces labour, but lower prices raise demand and soon reabsorb most or all of the displaced workers.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
Calculation need not require skill. De Prony's tables were computed by workers who knew only addition and subtraction and were more accurate than skilled mathematicians; this shows calculation can be done by machinery.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
No. Argues that a machine which halves the time needed to make an article lets a self-supplying household enjoy the same comforts with less labour, and that displaced labour is soon reabsorbed.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
Yes. Says a country must have reached a high degree of civilization before it approaches the limit of economy in applying force to transport.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1832HugoHugo,Notre-Dame de ParisFrenchFictionFull text
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
1835UreUre,The Philosophy of ManufacturesEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
Yes. Ure reports seeing cheerful child workers in factories and claims that, with adequate food and clothing, they would thrive there better than in unhealthy homes. These are Ure’s claims, not independently established facts about factory conditions.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
No. Defends self-acting machinery against the charge that it harasses the poor, arguing that the blessings of mechanical science to society have been too little recognised.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1836CarlyleCarlyle,Sartor ResartusEnglishFictionFull text
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. Man is weak in himself but a tool-using animal: 'without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.'
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1836PoePoe,Maelzel's Chess-PlayerEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
No. Calculation is determinate and can be mechanized, but in chess no move follows necessarily from the last and the opponent's will interrupts any fixed sequence, so a pure machine could not play.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
1837MacaulayMacaulay,Lord BaconEnglishEssayFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
Yes. Judges Bacon's philosophy by its fruits: it has lengthened life, spanned rivers, annihilated distance and driven cars without horses; its law is progress.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1839PoePoe,The Man That Was Used UpEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
No. Satirizes a celebrated general who turns out to be assembled each morning from artificial limbs, eyes, palate and wig, leaving little that is him.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1840TocquevilleTocqueville,Democracy in America, vol. 2FrenchTreatiseFull text
Alexis de Tocqueville
De la démocratie en Amérique
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1841EmersonEmerson,Self-RelianceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
Yes. Owning a watch and a nautical almanac, civilized man cannot tell the hour by the sun or name a star; each tool costs a native skill.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
No. 'The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet'; each gain in equipment is a loss of the person's own strength and skill.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
1842LotzeLotze,Leben. LebenskraftGermanEssayNo text yet
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
No. Rejects a special vital force; living phenomena arise from the same kinds of forces as inorganic nature, arranged in complex ways.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1842MenabreaMenabrea,Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles BabbageFrenchPeriodicalFull text
Luigi Federico Menabrea
Notions sur la machine analytique de M. Charles Babbage
French · Periodical
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
No. The engine cannot interpret a result that is not self-evident, such as a value becoming infinite; it can handle the case only if the programmer foresaw it and punched a card for it.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1843HawthorneHawthorne,The Celestial RailroadEnglishFictionFull text
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
1843KingKing,Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, with Notes by the TranslatorEnglishEssayFull text
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1843MillMill,A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and InductiveEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
Yes. Human actions follow from character and circumstances, but 'necessity' is a misleading word; a person who can shape his own character and resist his habits is morally free.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1845BastiatBastiat,Economic SophismsFrenchEssayFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
Yes. Labour is a means, not an end; any machine that saves an hour of work is progress, and suppressing machinery to create jobs is a sophism.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
Consumers, through cheapness. Society's interest is the consumer's interest in abundance; labour saved by machines is freed for other wants, so the gain spreads through lower prices.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1848MillMill,Principles of Political EconomyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Doubts that all mechanical inventions so far have lightened the day's toil of any human being; they have let more people live the same life of drudgery and made fortunes for manufacturers.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
The workers, through co-operative ownership. Expects labourers to associate as equals, collectively own the capital they work with, and elect their managers.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1849ThoreauThoreau,Resistance to Civil GovernmentEnglishEssayFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Soldiers and officials serve the state as machines, with no free exercise of judgment or moral sense.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
No. Most men serve the state 'not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies', as soldiers, jailers and constables, and so give up moral judgment; conscience must come first.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1853RuskinRuskin,The Stones of Venice, vol. 2EnglishEssayFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1854DickensDickens,Hard TimesEnglishFictionFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. Coketown's people all go in and out at the same hours to do the same work, and every day is the same as the one before.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1854Stafford et al.Stafford et al.,Report on the Organisation of the Permanent Civil ServiceEnglishOtherNo text yet
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Recommends that entry to the civil service be decided by open competitive examination instead of patronage.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1854ThoreauThoreau,WaldenEnglishOtherFull text
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Says people who once fed and sheltered themselves directly have become dependent on the tools and property they built, so that 'men have become the tools of their tools.'
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
No. Thoreau contrasts a mobile, self-providing life with settled dependence and says that people have become the tools of their tools. The passage addresses dependence more directly than attribution of technical capability.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
1855BüchnerBüchner,Force and MatterGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. There is no force without matter and no mind without brain; thought and will are functions of brain matter under natural law.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1857TrollopeTrollope,The Three ClerksEnglishFictionFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
No. Satirizes competitive examination for the civil service through the examiners Sir Gregory Hardlines and Mr Jobbles and a clerk who passes the test but proves dishonest.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1859BiranBiran,Essay on the Foundations of PsychologyFrenchTreatiseFull text
Maine de Biran
Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Yes. The primitive fact of consciousness is the feeling of willed effort meeting the body's resistance; in it we directly experience ourselves as a cause.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1859MillMill,On LibertyEnglishEssayFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. One who lets the world choose his plan of life needs only the ape-like faculty of imitation; the faculties of judgment are exercised only in making choices.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1860SpencerSpencer,The Social OrganismEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. Society is a growth and not a manufacture; constitutions are not made but grow, so treating the state as a contrivance to be redesigned mistakes its nature.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1861Feng GuifenFeng Guifen,Protests from the Jiaobin StudioChineseEssayNo text yet
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. China should adopt Western mathematics, mechanics and arms while keeping Chinese ethical teaching as the foundation; the principle later summarized as Chinese learning for substance, Western learning for application.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1862BouillierBouillier,Du principe vital et de l'âme pensanteFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. Defends animism: the vital principle is the same as the thinking soul, against both mechanist physiology and Montpellier vitalism's separate vital force.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1863ButlerButler,Darwin among the MachinesEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Argues that machines are evolving by the same process as organisms, with humans serving their reproduction, and will supplant humans.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. Signed 'Cellarius', the letter argues machines are evolving toward supremacy over man and that 'war to the death' should be proclaimed and every machine destroyed.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1864BabbageBabbage,Passages from the Life of a PhilosopherEnglishOtherFull text
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
Yes. Every game of skill can be played by an automaton, because a machine that can choose the right move from any position of the pieces can answer whatever its opponent does.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
1864DostoevskyDostoevsky,Notes from UndergroundRussianFictionFull text
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Записки из подполья
Russian · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. If all acts were tabulated by rules like a table of logarithms, man would be a piano key; he will act against his interest to prove he is not.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1865ButlerButler,Lucubratio EbriaEnglishPeriodicalNo text yet
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Treats machines as extra-corporeal limbs, so that it is humans who evolve by adding machines to themselves, not machines who evolve as a rival species.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1867MarxMarx,Capital, Volume IGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Calls for a critical history of technology on the model of Darwin's history of natural organs, but says with Vico that human history differs from natural history because we made it.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
Under capitalism the capitalist takes it; this is the problem. Machinery is not meant to lighten toil; it cheapens goods so the worker's share of the day shrinks and the unpaid share taken by the capitalist grows.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
No. In handicraft the worker uses a tool; in the factory the machine uses the worker, who becomes its living appendage.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1869ArnoldArnold,Culture and AnarchyEnglishEssayFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Says 'faith in machinery' is England's besetting danger: freedom, coal, railroads, wealth and even religious organisations are treated as ends in themselves.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1869GaltonGalton,Hereditary GeniusEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Ranks men by reputation on a graded statistical scale of natural ability, using judges and statesmen as samples, and treats that ability as measurable and inherited.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1870EmersonEmerson,CivilizationEnglishEssayFull text
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. People are strong by borrowing the might of the elements; steam, gravity and electricity do their work, so a person should 'hitch his wagon to a star'.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1870HodgsonHodgson,The Theory of Practice: An Ethical EnquiryEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. Neural events form a closed causal chain; states of consciousness are always conditioned by them and never condition them.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1870JevonsJevons,On the Mechanical Performance of Logical InferenceEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. Jevons contrasts the incompleteness of the ancient syllogism with deduction founded on fundamental laws of thought that can be embodied in uniform mechanical movements.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1871WhitmanWhitman,Passage to IndiaEnglishOtherFull text
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
1872ButlerButler,ErewhonEnglishFictionFull text
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
Satire. Satire of a country that tries and punishes people for illness and bodily failure, while treating forgery and violence as misfortunes of birth or upbringing needing cure.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Presents an Erewhonian treatise arguing that machines evolve and reproduce through human agency as clover reproduces through bees, followed by a reply that machines are only limbs.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. The Erewhonian treatise argues that machines will become the masters and humans their servants, which is why Erewhon destroyed its machines.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. The Erewhonian treatise argues men already live 'in a state of bondage to the machines' and would suffer terribly if machines vanished, since they can no longer live without them.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Both. An Erewhonian writer argues that machines are 'extra-corporeal limbs' and man a 'machinate mammal'; the Book's main author rejects this as a way of hiding the machines' growing independence.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1872RosenkranzRosenkranz,Pedagogics as a System, §99 (Anna C. Brackett translation)EnglishOtherPartial text
1874CarpenterCarpenter,Principles of Mental PhysiologyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Yes. Much mental activity is automatic and physically caused, but the Will is an independent power that controls and directs that activity.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1874CliffordClifford,Body and MindEnglishEssayFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. Mind and body are strictly correlated and physical events have only physical causes, so feelings run alongside the nervous process without acting on it.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1874HuxleyHuxley,On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its HistoryEnglishEssayFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. Consciousness is a collateral product of the body's working, like a steam whistle, and has no power to modify it; humans are conscious automata.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Holds animals may be conscious automata; because they probably feel and an error could have terrible consequences, they should be treated as weaker brethren.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1875Fukuzawa YukichiFukuzawa Yukichi,An Outline of a Theory of CivilizationJapaneseTreatiseNo text yet
Fukuzawa Yukichi
文明論之概略 (Bunmeiron no gairyaku)
Japanese · Treatise
No text yet · No English translation
Open source →- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
No. Japan cannot take Western technical novelties while keeping its old spirit; it must adopt the spirit of civilization, the independence of the individual and the nation, that produced them.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1875Pitt-RiversPitt-Rivers,On the Evolution of CultureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Argues that artefacts such as firearms and boats change by many small successive variations, in a process analogous to Darwinian evolution.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1877KappKapp,Outlines of a Philosophy of TechnologyGermanTreatiseFull text
Ernst Kapp
Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Argues that tools and machines are unconscious projections of human organs, so that technology develops as an outward copy of the human body.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Yes. Tools and machines are unconscious projections of the body's organs, with the hand as the model for all tools, so technology is the body carried outward.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1877MorganMorgan,Ancient SocietyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
Yes. Divides human history into savagery, barbarism and civilization, marking the stages largely by a sequence of inventions and discoveries.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1878BernardBernard,Leçons sur les phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux végétauxFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Neither. Rejects vitalism because a vital force can do nothing except through physical and chemical forces, and rejects materialism because those conditions alone do not explain the ordering of vital phenomena.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1879BakerBaker,Kirkes’ Hand-book of Physiology (ninth edition)EnglishOtherPartial text
1879EliotEliot,Impressions of Theophrastus SuchEnglishEssayFull text
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Speculates in dialogue that machines may come to evolve self-supply, self-repair and reproduction and so succeed humans.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1879GeorgeGeorge,Progress and PovertyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. It was expected that labour-saving inventions would lighten toil and end poverty; instead poverty deepens where machinery is most developed.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
Currently landowners; it should go to the community. Improvements in production raise rent, so landowners capture the gain; the remedy is to tax land values.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1879MaudsleyMaudsley,The Pathology of MindEnglishOtherPartial text
1880Bois-ReymondBois-Reymond,The Seven World-RiddlesGermanEssayFull text
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Die sieben Welträthsel
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Unresolved. Under the mechanical view the brain's state at each moment is the necessary effect of the previous one, leaving no room for free will, yet the felt freedom of choice remains one of seven unsolved world-riddles.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1883FitchFitch,Lectures on TeachingEnglishTreatiseFull text
1883LafargueLafargue,The Right to Be LazyFrenchEssayFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
No. Quotes Aristotle's self-weaving shuttles and calls the machine the redeemer of humanity that could free workers into leisure, if not for capitalist overwork.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
The workers, as leisure. As machines improve, workers work harder instead of resting; machine productivity should be taken as leisure by limiting work to three hours a day.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1883MüllerMüller,India: What Can It Teach Us?EnglishOtherFull text
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q23Does relying on written records weaken the ability to remember?
1884FerriFerri,Criminal SociologyItalianTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Positivist psychology refutes free will, so punishment cannot rest on moral guilt; a person is held responsible only because he lives in society, and penalties are social defense.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1884JheringJhering,Jest and Earnest in JurisprudenceGermanEssayFull text
Rudolf von Jhering
Scherz und Ernst in der Jurisprudenz
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. In the satire, the heaven of theoretical concepts is separated from the practitioners’ afterlife: practitioners could neither breathe nor see in the theorists’ world. This excerpt does not give a particular unjust judicial decision.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1884KingsleyKingsley,True Words for Brave Men, “Earthly and Heavenly Wisdom; or, Stoop to Conquer”EnglishOtherPartial text
1885FerryFerry,Speech to the Chamber of Deputies on colonial policyFrenchOtherFull text
Jules Ferry
Discours sur la politique coloniale
French · Other
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
Yes. Ferry asserts that contemporary European nations generously discharge a superior race’s civilizing duty, contrasting this with earlier Spanish enslavement. The excerpt does not state the technological premise or the explicit right-because-duty formula.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1886l'Isle-Adaml'Isle-Adam,Tomorrow's EveFrenchFictionFull text
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
No. Edison's android Hadaly holds convincing conversations, but her speech plays from phonograph recordings written in advance by poets and philosophers, so her conversation shows other people's thought, not her own.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Yes. A fictional Edison builds an artificial woman, Hadaly, and gives her to Lord Ewald as a replacement for the woman he loves.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
Yes. Edison argues that the android Hadaly, with recorded speech and no inner life of her own, will be better company for Ewald than the shallow woman she copies.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1887PeircePeirce,Logical MachinesEnglishOtherPartial text
1887WilsonWilson,The Study of AdministrationEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. Administration should be a separate science carried out by trained officials under political direction, kept apart from politics.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
1888BellamyBellamy,Looking Backward, 2000–1887EnglishFictionFull text
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
All citizens equally. The nation owns the mills and machinery, and every citizen receives an equal credit on the annual product.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
1889BergsonBergson,Time and Free WillFrenchTreatiseFull text
Henri Bergson
Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
No. Determinism treats conscious states as separate things in space; a free act comes from the whole self in real duration and cannot be predicted or explained by physical causes.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1889CarpenterCarpenter,Civilisation: Its Cause and CureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Says locomotives, machinery and telegraphs must be reduced to subjection to the real man instead of remaining objects of 'mere fetish-worship as now'.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1889ZhuangziZhuangzi,Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), 'Heaven and Earth'Classical ChineseTreatiseFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. A gardener refuses a well-sweep that would water a hundred times more ground, saying that cunning implements produce cunning hearts unfit for the Tao.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1890JamesJames,The Principles of PsychologyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Yes. Consciousness is selective and grows more complex where the nervous system is least determinate, which would be useless if it had no effect; the automaton theory is an unwarranted a priori claim.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Yes. James recommends making useful actions habitual so that automatic performance of daily details releases higher mental powers for their own work.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1890LeibnizLeibniz,On the Characteristic Art for Perfecting the Sciences Founded on ReasonLatinEssayFull text
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
De arte characteristica ad perficiendas scientias ratione nitentes
Latin · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. Proposes a universal symbolic calculus so that disputants could settle a disagreement by sitting down and saying 'let us calculate'.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1891WildeWilde,The Soul of Man under SocialismEnglishEssayFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
No. Argues that machinery now competes with men but under proper conditions will serve them, and that the future depends on mechanical slavery.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
No. Argues that under proper social arrangements machinery will do all necessary and unpleasant work, freeing people to cultivate themselves; at present it competes with men only because of private ownership.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1892KropotkinKropotkin,The Conquest of BreadFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
Everyone in common. Machinery and all accumulated wealth are the work of past generations in common, so no one can claim them privately; all belongs to all.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
1892SaltSalt,Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social ProgressEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Argues that if men have rights so do the lower animals, and rejects doctrines that deny animals feel pain.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
1894TolstoyTolstoy,The Kingdom of God Is Within YouRussianTreatiseFull text
Leo Tolstoy
Царство Божие внутри вас
Russian · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Military drill, by deception, blows and vodka, turns sensible young men into soldiers who would bayonet their own fathers on command.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
No. The state spreads each act of violence across many officials, each of whom says he only obeyed orders, so that no one feels responsible; every official must refuse.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1895CarrollCarroll,What the Tortoise Said to AchillesEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Shows in dialogue that a party who accepts the premises can still refuse the conclusion, because each rule of inference added as a new premise demands another rule to apply it.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1895RouxRoux,Collected Papers on the Developmental Mechanics of OrganismsGermanTreatiseFull text
Wilhelm Roux
Gesammelte Abhandlungen über Entwickelungsmechanik der Organismen
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
Yes. Proposes a developmental mechanics that studies the causes of embryonic form by experiment on eggs, treating development as the working-out of physical and chemical causes.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1898BellocBelloc,The Modern TravellerEnglishFictionFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Satirical verse whose narrator rests European mastery in Africa on the Maxim gun alone: 'Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.'
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1898KiddKidd,The Control of the TropicsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
Yes. The tropics must be administered by the higher civilizations as a trust, because their resources are needed by the world and their peoples cannot develop them alone.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1898WellsWells,The War of the WorldsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Technically superior Martians treat humans as Europeans treated the Tasmanians, and the narrator asks whether people who exterminated the Tasmanians can complain.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1898Zhang ZhidongZhang Zhidong,Exhortation to LearningChineseTreatiseFull text
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. China should keep the Confucian basis of society and take Western learning only to strengthen its material basis.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1899ConferenceConference,Declaration concerning Asphyxiating Gases (Hague Declaration IV, 2)FrenchOtherFull text
Plenipotentiaries of the Hague Peace Conference
French · Other
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. The contracting powers agree to abstain from projectiles whose object is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1899GényGény,Method of Interpretation and Sources in Private Positive LawFrenchTreatiseNo text yet
François Gény
Méthode d'interprétation et sources en droit privé positif
French · Treatise
No text yet · No English translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Argues that the code cannot supply every answer and that where it is silent the judge must use custom and 'free scientific research' rather than force the text.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1899HaeckelHaeckel,The Riddle of the UniverseGermanTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. The struggle over free will has ended in favor of determinism; the human will is no freer than an animal's and differs only in degree.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1899KropotkinKropotkin,Fields, Factories and WorkshopsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
No. Argues that the spread of industrial skill and intensive agriculture lets each nation and region produce its own food and manufactures instead of depending on distant specialised centres.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
1900HilbertHilbert,Mathematical ProblemsGermanEssayFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. States the conviction that every definite mathematical problem can be settled, either by solution or proof of impossibility: 'in mathematics there is no ignorabimus'.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1901MorganMorgan,RegenerationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1901PearsonPearson,National Life from the Standpoint of ScienceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
Yes. Progress comes through struggle between races, and a scientifically efficient nation is justified in displacing less efficient peoples.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1902HobsonHobson,Imperialism: A StudyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Hobson rejects the claim that the struggle of races lets the 'socially efficient' justly govern or displace others, and traces imperialism to the interests of finance.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1902Yan FuYan Fu,Letter to the Editor of the Waijiao baoChineseLetterNo text yet
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
No. Chinese and Western learning each have their own substance and application; combining Chinese substance with Western application makes both lose their meaning.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1904VeblenVeblen,The Theory of Business EnterpriseEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1906FedorovFedorov,The Philosophy of the Common TaskRussianTreatisePartial text
Nikolai Fedorov
Философия общего дела
Russian · Treatise
Partial text · No English translation
Open source →- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Makes the defeat of death and the physical resurrection of all ancestors the common task to which science and technology should be directed.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1906FlaviusFlavius,The Battle for Legal ScienceGermanEssayFull text
Gnaeus Flavius (Hermann Kantorowicz)
Der Kampf um die Rechtswissenschaft
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Manifesto of the Free Law movement, arguing that judges already decide with more freedom than the statute allows and should do so openly.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1907AdamsAdams,The Education of Henry AdamsEnglishOtherFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. At the 1900 Paris Exposition Adams feels the dynamos as a moral force, as early Christians felt the Cross, and finds himself inclined to pray to one.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1907BergsonBergson,Creative EvolutionFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. Neither mechanism nor finalism explains evolution; life is a vital impetus that physics and chemistry do not capture, though he criticizes the older vital-principle theories.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Distinguishes instinct, which makes organized instruments, from intelligence, which makes unorganized tools, placing machines outside the evolution of life.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
No. Instinct uses organized instruments that are part of the body, while intelligence makes inorganic tools that stay separate from it and can be varied without limit; this separateness defines homo faber.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1907HallHall,Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and HygieneEnglishOtherPartial text
1907MeltzerMeltzer,The Factors of Safety in Animal Structure and Animal EconomyEnglishOtherPartial text
1907MetchnikoffMetchnikoff,The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic StudiesFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Qualified. Metchnikoff defines orthobiosis as prolonged active, healthy old age followed by satiety of life and a wish for death, expressly distinguishing this ideal from simple prolongation.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1908BennettBennett,How to Live on 24 Hours a DayEnglishManualFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Strengthens, if not worshipped. A daily programme gives mastery over one's time, but one must not be tied to it like a slave to a chariot.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1908DrieschDriesch,The Science and Philosophy of the OrganismEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. An embryo fragment can form a whole organism, which no machine could do, so development requires a non-physical ordering factor he calls entelechy.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Argues from sea-urchin experiments, where a half-egg still yields a whole larva, that development cannot be the work of a machine and requires a non-mechanical agent he calls entelechy.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1908PoincaréPoincaré,Science and MethodFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Poincaré argues that blind adherence to rules would require infallibility, whereas logicians have encountered contradictions and are revising their rules.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1908PoundPound,Mechanical JurisprudenceEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Criticizes judges who deduce decisions mechanically from fixed conceptions regardless of results, and calls for law judged by how it works in practice.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1909BinetBinet,Modern Ideas About ChildrenFrenchTreatiseFull text
Alfred Binet
Les idées modernes sur les enfants
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Qualified. Binet argues that distraction, discomfort or boredom can cause failure on a test, making measurement of a child’s intelligence from very few tests absurd. This is a qualification of testing, not a rejection of all tests.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1909ForsterForster,The Machine StopsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Depicts a humanity that lives underground wholly dependent on and worshipping a Machine, which collapses and kills them.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Kuno says the Machine has robbed people of spatial and tactile capacities, weakened relationships, paralyzed bodies and wills, and compelled worship. This is his speech, not the later narrated collapse.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. People consult the Book of the Machine as scripture and come to worship the Machine that serves them.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1909GandhiGandhi,Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home RuleGujaratiTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Machinery has impoverished India by destroying handicraft and has begun to desolate Europe; India should do without it.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Argues machinery has impoverished India by destroying hand industry and that Indians should reduce their use of mills and machines and return to hand-spinning and hand-weaving.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Argues modern civilization, whose chief symbol is machinery, is an irreligious condition; true civilization is moral conduct, and India's ancestors chose not to pursue machinery.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
No. Machinery is the chief sign of modern civilization and has impoverished India; India cannot take it up and remain itself.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1909SmithSmith,The Teaching of ArithmeticEnglishTreatiseFull text
1911Henry et al.Henry et al.,Sensory Disturbances from Cerebral LesionsEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Yes. Anything that takes part in the conscious movement of the body is added to the body schema; a woman's sense of location may extend to the feather in her hat.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
1911TaylorTaylor,The Principles of Scientific ManagementEnglishManualFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1912FujisawaFujisawa,Summary Report on the Teaching of Mathematics in JapanEnglishTreatiseFull text
1912HartnessHartness,The Human Factor in Works ManagementEnglishOtherPartial text
1912LoebLoeb,The Mechanistic Conception of LifeEnglishEssayFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
No. Life phenomena, including development and instinct, can be explained by physics and chemistry, and experimental control of them removes the need for a vital principle.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
Yes. Argues from artificial parthenogenesis and tropism experiments that life processes, including the start of development of the egg, can be explained by physics and chemistry.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1913HaldaneHaldane,Mechanism, Life and PersonalityEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Neither. The mechanistic theory cannot account for the way an organism maintains and reproduces its own structure, but vitalism is no better; biology needs the organism as its own basic concept.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Criticizes the mechanistic theory of life, arguing that the self-maintaining and self-reproducing organization of the organism cannot be explained as the working of a machine.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1913MünsterbergMünsterberg,Psychology and Industrial EfficiencyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Proposes selecting workers, including tram drivers and ship officers, by laboratory tests of the mental traits each job requires.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1914QuevedoQuevedo,Essays on AutomaticsSpanishPeriodicalFull text
Leonardo Torres Quevedo
Ensayos sobre automática: su definición, extensión teórica de sus aplicaciones
Spanish · Periodical
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
No. Torres argues that appropriate replies need not involve the automaton’s own reasoning: the constructor could prearrange them. The restored paragraph compares the practical difficulty with constructing a lifelike animal. This is a theoretical construction, not a report of a built conversational machine.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
Yes. Torres rejects the mental/manual distinction and proposes automata whose actions are determined by circumstances under rules fixed at construction. Arbitrariamente means rules freely specified by the constructor, not random conduct. This passage does not establish learning beyond anticipated cases.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1914RilkeRilke,Dolls: On the Wax Dolls of Lotte PritzelGermanEssayFull text
Rainer Maria Rilke
Puppen. Zu den Wachs-Puppen von Lotte Pritzel
German · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. The child's doll takes all the love given it and answers with silence, because it is made of stuff that cannot respond; Rilke treats this as the child's first experience of not being loved back.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
1914WellsWells,The World Set FreeEnglishFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. The narrator describes Holsten’s fear of his discovery’s consequences and his thought that publication might be premature. His later disclaimer of unforeseeable consequences is a separate passage.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1915VeblenVeblen,Imperial Germany and the Industrial RevolutionEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. Germany borrowed English machine technology without the English institutions that grew up with it, which let a dynastic state use it; Veblen holds that the machine discipline will erode those older institutions over time.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1916LoebLoeb,The Organism as a Whole, from a Physicochemical ViewpointEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1916TermanTerman,The Measurement of IntelligenceEnglishManualFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Terman anticipates occupational intelligence-quotient thresholds and recommends psychologists to screen applicants, while denying that available tests can unerringly select a precise occupation for each person.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1917LeninLenin,The State and RevolutionRussianTreatiseFull text
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
Yes. Lenin interprets Marx as requiring the working class to smash ready-made state machinery rather than merely take possession of it.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1917TagoreTagore,NationalismEnglishEssayFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Argues the West has turned society into a machine of commerce and politics whose aim is success, not goodness, eliminating moral responsibility.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Conditional. Japan can take Western science only if it assimilates it to its own character; if it copies Western nationalism it becomes a borrowed machine left with only borrowed weapons.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1918BaumBaum,The Tin Woodman of OzEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Contested. The Tin Woodman, whose flesh was replaced piece by piece with tin, meets his old living head, which denies that the tin man is the same person.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1919FreudFreud,The UncannyGermanPeriodicalFull text
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1919WeberWeber,Politics as a VocationGermanEssayFull text
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. The honor of the civil servant is to carry out a superior's order conscientiously as if it were his own conviction, even when he thinks it wrong; personal responsibility belongs to the political leader.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
1920ČapekČapek,R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)CzechFictionFull text
Karel Čapek
R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti)
Czech · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Robots built to free humans from labour outnumber them, revolt and exterminate them.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Both. Dr Gall adds pain nerves to the Robots only so they will not damage themselves; asked if they will be happier, he says no, only more perfect technically, while Helena's Humanity League campaigns for them.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Both. Robots are manufactured and sold by a company as products; the play ends with their revolt against their makers.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1921WattsWatts,An Introduction to the Psychological Problems of IndustryEnglishOtherPartial text
1922ČapekČapek,The Makropulos AffairCzechFictionNo text yet
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
No. A singer who has lived over 300 years by an elixir finds such a long life empty, and the recipe is burned rather than used.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1922DarrowDarrow,Crime: Its Cause and TreatmentEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Conduct follows from heredity and environment like the rest of animal life, so the legal idea of free will and personal guilt is a 'gross error' and punishment should give way to treatment.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1922DeweyDewey,Human Nature and ConductEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Depends on whether habit is intelligent or routine. Habit is not mere repetition but an acquired disposition that amounts to will; routine habit enslaves, intelligent habit is the means of action.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1922FordFord,My Life and WorkEnglishOtherFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1922LippmannLippmann,The Mental Age of AmericansEnglishPeriodicalNo text yet
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
No. Argues in six New Republic essays that the Army tests do not measure inborn intelligence and that the claim of an average mental age of fourteen is nonsense.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1924ČapekČapek,KrakatitCzechFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. In the final chapter, the old man whom Prokop recognizes as God urges him to abandon destructive work and start again with useful energy. This makes responsibility an obligation to redirect invention; it is not a legal rule about every unintended harm. Quoted from Lawrence Hyde’s 1925 English translation of the 1924 Czech novel.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1924HaldaneHaldane,Daedalus, or Science and the FutureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
No. Uses Daedalus, who caused the death of Minos yet was never punished, to argue that the scientific worker is not concerned with gods and that mankind must adjust its morality to the powers science gives it.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1924RussellRussell,Icarus, or the Future of ScienceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
No. Argues science only lets the holders of power realise their purposes more fully; whether it does good or harm depends on those purposes, which at present are mostly evil.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1924ZamyatinZamyatin,WeRussianFictionFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. The narrator praises the Tables of Hours that fix when everyone rises, works, eats and walks, and hopes to absorb even the two personal hours; the novel shows this as the end of freedom.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1925BelyaevBelyaev,Professor Dowell's HeadRussianFictionFull text
Alexander Belyaev
Голова профессора Доуэля
Russian · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. A scientist's severed head is kept alive by machines and remains himself, thinking and suffering, without a body.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1925HaldaneHaldane,Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical WarfareEnglishEssayFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
No. Argues gas weapons such as tear gas are more humane than shells and bayonets, and that the Hague ban on gas projectiles was well meant but misguided.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1928EddingtonEddington,The Nature of the Physical WorldEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
No. Quantum physics has withdrawn strict causality from the physical world, so physics no longer requires the complete determinism of mind that would rule out volition.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1929BernalBernal,The World, the Flesh and the DevilEnglishEssayFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Proposes replacing the body organ by organ with mechanisms until the person is a brain in a cylinder linked to artificial senses, and treats this as the same mind continuing.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1930FreudFreud,Civilization and Its DiscontentsGermanTreatiseFull text
Sigmund Freud
Das Unbehagen in der Kultur
German · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. With his auxiliary organs man has become 'a kind of prosthetic God', but the organs have not grown onto him, give him trouble, and have not made him happy.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1931JonesJones,The Jameson SatelliteEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Aliens place a dead professor's preserved brain in a mechanical body and he continues as himself.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1931SpenglerSpengler,Man and TechnicsGermanTreatiseFull text
Oswald Spengler
Der Mensch und die Technik
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Treats machine technology as the expression of Western man's will to power, a stage in a culture's life that ends in decline.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. Western technics has become detachable from the Faustian culture that made it, so non-Western peoples can take it up and turn it against the West.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1933BerdyaevBerdyaev,Man and MachineRussianPeriodicalFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Berdyaev describes faith in technics as the remaining strong faith of modern civilized humanity, whose attachment to it may change humanity’s own image.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1936TuringTuring,On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the EntscheidungsproblemEnglishPeriodicalIn copyright
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Proves that no general mechanical procedure can decide, for every statement of first-order logic, whether it follows from given axioms.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1938ReyRey,Helen O'LoyEnglishFictionIn copyright
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1943RosenbluethRosenblueth,Behavior, Purpose and TeleologyEnglishPeriodicalIn copyright
Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow
English · Periodical
In copyright · English original
Open source →- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
Yes. Machines governed by negative feedback correct their course toward a goal from information about their own errors, so purposeful behavior is not unique to organisms.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
1945Merleau-PontyMerleau-Ponty,Phenomenology of PerceptionFrenchTreatiseIn copyright
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phénoménologie de la perception
French · Treatise
In copyright · No English translation
Open source →- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Yes. The blind man's cane stops being an object in his hand and becomes an extension of his bodily reach; habit incorporates the tool into the body schema.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
1947WienerWiener,A Scientist RebelsEnglishLetterIn copyright
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. Wiener responds to a request for wartime research on controlled missiles. He treats disclosure as a moral choice because of foreseeable civilian harm. This supports responsibility for dissemination, not unlimited liability for every unforeseeable use. Brief extract; review the full paragraph before preparing a sorting pool.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1949HartreeHartree,Calculating Instruments and MachinesEnglishTreatiseIn copyright
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1949JeffersonJefferson,The Mind of Mechanical Man (Lister Oration)EnglishEssayIn copyright
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
No. A machine that produces sonnets or answers is not thinking unless it writes them from felt thoughts and emotions and knows that it has done so.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1950CésaireCésaire,Discourse on ColonialismFrenchEssayIn copyright
Aimé Césaire
Discours sur le colonialisme
French · Essay
In copyright · No English translation
Open source →- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Colonizers' claims of roads, railways and material progress do not justify colonial rule; the Congo-Ocean railway cost lives, and no one knows what these countries would have built without Europe.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1950TuringTuring,Computing Machinery and IntelligenceEnglishPeriodicalIn copyright
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
Yes. Replaces 'Can machines think?' with the imitation game: a machine that converses indistinguishably from a human should be credited as we credit other people.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
Yes. Turing distinguishes a trained machine from a computation whose internal state the operator aims to follow. The omitted continuation allows some prediction of its behaviour; opacity alone does not establish judgment. Brief extract: the full pp.458–459 discussion should be reviewed before making a sorting pool.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?