Passage 1
Arithmetical or algebraical calculations are, from their very nature, fixed and determinate. Certain ''data'' being given, certain results necessarily and inevitably follow. These results have dependence upon nothing, and are influenced by nothing but the ''data'' originally given. And the question to be solved proceeds, or should proceed, to its final determination, by a succession of unerring steps liable to no change, and subject to no modification. This being the case, we can without difficulty conceive the ''possibility'' of so arranging a piece of mechanism, that upon starting it in accordance with the ''data'' of the question to be solved, it should continue its movements regularly, progressively, and undeviatingly towards the required solution, since these movements, however complex, are never imagined to be otherwise than finite and determinate. But the case is widely different with the Chess-Player. With him there is no determinate progression. No one move in chess necessarily follows upon any one other. From no particular disposition of the men at one period of a game can we predicate their disposition at a different period. Let us place the ''first move'' in a game of chess, in juxta-position with the ''data'' of an algebraical question, and their great difference will be immediately perceived. From the latter — from the ''data'' — the second step of the question, dependent thereupon, inevitably follows. It is modeled by the ''data''. It must be ''thus'' and not otherwise. But from the first move in the game of chess no especial second move follows of necessity. In the algebraical question, as it proceeds towards solution, the ''certainty'' of its operations remains altogether unimpaired. The second step having been a consequence of the ''data'', the third step is equally a consequence of the second, the fourth of the third, the fifth of the fourth, and so on, ''and not possibly otherwise'', to the end. But in proportion to the progress made in a game of chess, is the ''uncertainty'' of each ensuing move. A few moves having been made, ''no'' step is certain. Different spectators of the game would advise different moves. All is then dependent upon the variable judgment of the players.
Cognition, attention, and judgmentTools and agentscalculation is insufficient · advancesselection and judgment · advancesLogic, language, and formal reasoningMeaning, experience, and interpretationNo judgment offeredIndividualMachine or artificial systemMind and body
Poe grants that a mechanism can execute a determinate calculation, but argues that chess calls for judgment among moves that no prior position necessitates.
“Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” comparison of calculation and chess