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.
16 of 219 works
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?