Politics

Answers

• Q14SUCCESSION

  Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?

  No. capable instruments serve. 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.

  As in all arts which are brought to perfection it is necessary that they should have their proper instruments if they would complete their works, so is it in the art of managing a family: now of instruments some of them are alive, others inanimate; thus with respect to the pilot of the ship, the tiller is without life, the sailor is alive; for a servant is as an instrument in many arts. Thus property is as an instrument to living; an estate is a multitude of instruments; so a slave is an animated instrument, but every one that can minister of himself is more valuable than any other instrument; for if every instrument, at command, or from a preconception of its master's will, could accomplish its work (as the story goes of the statues of Daedalus; or what the poet tells us of the tripods of Vulcan, "that they moved of their own accord into the assembly of the gods "), the shuttle would then weave, and the lyre play of itself; nor would the architect want servants, or the [1254a] master slaves.

  Book I, chapter 4 · Passage confirmed (MIT Classics, Wikisource); Gutenberg #6762 listed. Quoted by Lafargue and others in the period.

• Q29PERSONHOOD

  Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?

  Yes. a living instrument is property of its master. 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.

  As in all arts which are brought to perfection it is necessary that they should have their proper instruments if they would complete their works, so is it in the art of managing a family: now of instruments some of them are alive, others inanimate; thus with respect to the pilot of the ship, the tiller is without life, the sailor is alive; for a servant is as an instrument in many arts. Thus property is as an instrument to living; an estate is a multitude of instruments; so a slave is an animated instrument, but every one that can minister of himself is more valuable than any other instrument; for if every instrument, at command, or from a preconception of its master's will, could accomplish its work (as the story goes of the statues of Daedalus; or what the poet tells us of the tripods of Vulcan, "that they moved of their own accord into the assembly of the gods "), the shuttle would then weave, and the lyre play of itself; nor would the architect want servants, or the [1254a] master slaves.

  Book I, Chapter IV (Ellis translation) · Gutenberg #6762; passage read. Year given is the Ellis translation.