Man a Machine

Answers

• Q02THINKING

  Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?

  Yes. in the materialist sense; speaking is a mechanical capacity, and a speaking creature would count as a thinking one. 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.

  Celles d'Amman sont bien d'un autre prix; il a tiré les hommes de l'instinct auquel ils semblaient condamnés; il leur a donné les idées, de l'esprit, une âme en un mot, qu'ils n'eussent jamais eue. Quel plus grand pouvoir! Ne bornons point les ressources de la nature; elles sont infinies, surtout aidées d'un grand art. La même mécanique, qui ouvre le canal d'Eustachi dans les sourds, ne pourrait-il le déboucher dans les singes? Une heureuse envie d'imiter la prononciation du maître, ne pourrait-elle mettre en liberté les organes de la parole, dans les animaux qui imitent tant d'autres signes, avec tant d'adresse et d'intelligence ? Non seulement je défie qu'on me cite aucune expérience vraiment concluante, qui décide mon projet impossible et ridicule ; mais la similitude de la structure et des opérations du singe est telle, que je ne doute presque point, si on exerçait parfaitement cet animal, qu'on ne vînt enfin à bout de lui apprendre à prononcer, et par conséquent à savoir une langue. Alors ce ne serait plus ni un homme sauvage, ni un homme manqué: ce serait un homme parfait, un petit homme de ville, avec autant d'étoffe ou de muscles que nous-mêmes, pour penser et profiter de son éducation.

  OCR corrected

  Archive.org metadata for the 1912 Open Court French–English edition; search result from the archive.org full text confirms the ape-and-Amman passage. Imprint dated 1748, published late 1747.

• Q05AUTOMATON

  Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?

  Yes. human thought and conduct follow from bodily mechanism. 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.

  In fact, if what thinks in my brain is not a part of this organ and therefore of the whole body, why does my blood boil, and the fever of my mind pass into my veins, when lying quietly in bed, I am forming the plan of some work or carrying on an abstract calculation? … In short, if the nerve-tension which causes pain occasions also the fever by which the distracted mind loses its will-power, and if, conversely, the mind too much excited, disturbs the body (and kindles that inner fire which killed Bayle while he was still so young) ; if an agitation rouses my desire and my ardent wish for what, a moment ago, I cared nothing about, and if in their turn certain brain impressions excite the same longing and the same desires, then why should we regard as double what is manifestly one being? In vain you fall back on the power of the will, since for one order that the will gives, it bows a hundred times to the yoke.^^

  OCR corrected

  Archive.org metadata for the 1912 Open Court French–English edition; Wikipedia entry confirms the work and dating (imprint 1748).