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.
11 of 219 works
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?