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.
84 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?
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?
1813OwenOwen,A New View of SocietyEnglishEssayFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. A person's character is formed for him by circumstances, not by him, so it is unjust for society to punish the characters its own arrangements produce; crime should be prevented, not punished.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
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?
1818ShelleyShelley,Frankenstein; or, The Modern PrometheusEnglishFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. Victor, who never intended his creature to kill, judges himself 'not in deed, but in effect' the true murderer when his brother is killed and Justine condemned.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. The creature demands that his maker relieve his misery, arguing that he was benevolent until suffering made him a fiend.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
No. The creature tells Victor 'I ought to be thy Adam', and Victor recognises 'the duties of a creator towards his creature', framing the relation as obligation rather than ownership.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
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?
1821RicardoRicardo,On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (3rd ed.)EnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Added chapter concedes that the workers' belief that machinery often harms them is correct: it can cut the fund that employs labour while landlords and capitalists gain.
- 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?
1829CarlyleCarlyle,Signs of the TimesEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Argues that the age of machinery has made men mechanical in head and heart as well as in hand.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Calls the age mechanical in head and heart; men hope only in mechanism, and worship an idol of Strength instead of the Beautiful and Good.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. The age trusts machinery in politics as in industry, believing good government is a matter of mechanical arrangements; Carlyle holds that social health depends on inward, dynamic forces that no constitution-making can supply.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
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?
1832BabbageBabbage,On the Economy of Machinery and ManufacturesEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
Yes. Machinery first displaces labour, but lower prices raise demand and soon reabsorb most or all of the displaced workers.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
Calculation need not require skill. De Prony's tables were computed by workers who knew only addition and subtraction and were more accurate than skilled mathematicians; this shows calculation can be done by machinery.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
No. Argues that a machine which halves the time needed to make an article lets a self-supplying household enjoy the same comforts with less labour, and that displaced labour is soon reabsorbed.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
Yes. Says a country must have reached a high degree of civilization before it approaches the limit of economy in applying force to transport.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
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?
1835UreUre,The Philosophy of ManufacturesEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
Yes. Ure reports seeing cheerful child workers in factories and claims that, with adequate food and clothing, they would thrive there better than in unhealthy homes. These are Ure’s claims, not independently established facts about factory conditions.
- 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.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
No. Defends self-acting machinery against the charge that it harasses the poor, arguing that the blessings of mechanical science to society have been too little recognised.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1836CarlyleCarlyle,Sartor ResartusEnglishFictionFull text
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. Man is weak in himself but a tool-using animal: 'without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.'
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1836PoePoe,Maelzel's Chess-PlayerEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
No. Calculation is determinate and can be mechanized, but in chess no move follows necessarily from the last and the opponent's will interrupts any fixed sequence, so a pure machine could not play.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
1837MacaulayMacaulay,Lord BaconEnglishEssayFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
Yes. Judges Bacon's philosophy by its fruits: it has lengthened life, spanned rivers, annihilated distance and driven cars without horses; its law is progress.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1839PoePoe,The Man That Was Used UpEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
No. Satirizes a celebrated general who turns out to be assembled each morning from artificial limbs, eyes, palate and wig, leaving little that is him.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
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?
1841EmersonEmerson,Self-RelianceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
Yes. Owning a watch and a nautical almanac, civilized man cannot tell the hour by the sun or name a star; each tool costs a native skill.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
No. 'The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet'; each gain in equipment is a loss of the person's own strength and skill.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
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?
1843HawthorneHawthorne,The Celestial RailroadEnglishFictionFull text
- 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?
1843KingKing,Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, with Notes by the TranslatorEnglishEssayFull text
- 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.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1843MillMill,A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and InductiveEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
Yes. Human actions follow from character and circumstances, but 'necessity' is a misleading word; a person who can shape his own character and resist his habits is morally free.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
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?
1848MillMill,Principles of Political EconomyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Doubts that all mechanical inventions so far have lightened the day's toil of any human being; they have let more people live the same life of drudgery and made fortunes for manufacturers.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
The workers, through co-operative ownership. Expects labourers to associate as equals, collectively own the capital they work with, and elect their managers.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1849ThoreauThoreau,Resistance to Civil GovernmentEnglishEssayFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Soldiers and officials serve the state as machines, with no free exercise of judgment or moral sense.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
No. Most men serve the state 'not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies', as soldiers, jailers and constables, and so give up moral judgment; conscience must come first.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1853RuskinRuskin,The Stones of Venice, vol. 2EnglishEssayFull text
- 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?
1854DickensDickens,Hard TimesEnglishFictionFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. Coketown's people all go in and out at the same hours to do the same work, and every day is the same as the one before.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1854ThoreauThoreau,WaldenEnglishOtherFull text
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Says people who once fed and sheltered themselves directly have become dependent on the tools and property they built, so that 'men have become the tools of their tools.'
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
No. Thoreau contrasts a mobile, self-providing life with settled dependence and says that people have become the tools of their tools. The passage addresses dependence more directly than attribution of technical capability.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
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?
1857TrollopeTrollope,The Three ClerksEnglishFictionFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
No. Satirizes competitive examination for the civil service through the examiners Sir Gregory Hardlines and Mr Jobbles and a clerk who passes the test but proves dishonest.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
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?
1859MillMill,On LibertyEnglishEssayFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. One who lets the world choose his plan of life needs only the ape-like faculty of imitation; the faculties of judgment are exercised only in making choices.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1860SpencerSpencer,The Social OrganismEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. Society is a growth and not a manufacture; constitutions are not made but grow, so treating the state as a contrivance to be redesigned mistakes its nature.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
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?
1863ButlerButler,Darwin among the MachinesEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- 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.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Argues that machines are evolving by the same process as organisms, with humans serving their reproduction, and will supplant humans.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. Signed 'Cellarius', the letter argues machines are evolving toward supremacy over man and that 'war to the death' should be proclaimed and every machine destroyed.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1864BabbageBabbage,Passages from the Life of a PhilosopherEnglishOtherFull text
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
Yes. Every game of skill can be played by an automaton, because a machine that can choose the right move from any position of the pieces can answer whatever its opponent does.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
1864DostoevskyDostoevsky,Notes from UndergroundRussianFictionFull text
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Записки из подполья
Russian · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. If all acts were tabulated by rules like a table of logarithms, man would be a piano key; he will act against his interest to prove he is not.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
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?
1869ArnoldArnold,Culture and AnarchyEnglishEssayFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Says 'faith in machinery' is England's besetting danger: freedom, coal, railroads, wealth and even religious organisations are treated as ends in themselves.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1869GaltonGalton,Hereditary GeniusEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Ranks men by reputation on a graded statistical scale of natural ability, using judges and statesmen as samples, and treats that ability as measurable and inherited.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1870EmersonEmerson,CivilizationEnglishEssayFull text
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. People are strong by borrowing the might of the elements; steam, gravity and electricity do their work, so a person should 'hitch his wagon to a star'.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1870HodgsonHodgson,The Theory of Practice: An Ethical EnquiryEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. Neural events form a closed causal chain; states of consciousness are always conditioned by them and never condition them.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1870JevonsJevons,On the Mechanical Performance of Logical InferenceEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- 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.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. Jevons contrasts the incompleteness of the ancient syllogism with deduction founded on fundamental laws of thought that can be embodied in uniform mechanical movements.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1871WhitmanWhitman,Passage to IndiaEnglishOtherFull text
- 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?
1872ButlerButler,ErewhonEnglishFictionFull text
- 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.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
Satire. Satire of a country that tries and punishes people for illness and bodily failure, while treating forgery and violence as misfortunes of birth or upbringing needing cure.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Presents an Erewhonian treatise arguing that machines evolve and reproduce through human agency as clover reproduces through bees, followed by a reply that machines are only limbs.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. The Erewhonian treatise argues that machines will become the masters and humans their servants, which is why Erewhon destroyed its machines.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. The Erewhonian treatise argues men already live 'in a state of bondage to the machines' and would suffer terribly if machines vanished, since they can no longer live without them.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Both. An Erewhonian writer argues that machines are 'extra-corporeal limbs' and man a 'machinate mammal'; the Book's main author rejects this as a way of hiding the machines' growing independence.
- Q01Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?
1874CarpenterCarpenter,Principles of Mental PhysiologyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Yes. Much mental activity is automatic and physically caused, but the Will is an independent power that controls and directs that activity.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1874CliffordClifford,Body and MindEnglishEssayFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. Mind and body are strictly correlated and physical events have only physical causes, so feelings run alongside the nervous process without acting on it.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1874HuxleyHuxley,On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its HistoryEnglishEssayFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. Consciousness is a collateral product of the body's working, like a steam whistle, and has no power to modify it; humans are conscious automata.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Holds animals may be conscious automata; because they probably feel and an error could have terrible consequences, they should be treated as weaker brethren.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1875Pitt-RiversPitt-Rivers,On the Evolution of CultureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Argues that artefacts such as firearms and boats change by many small successive variations, in a process analogous to Darwinian evolution.
- 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?
1877MorganMorgan,Ancient SocietyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
Yes. Divides human history into savagery, barbarism and civilization, marking the stages largely by a sequence of inventions and discoveries.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
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?
1879EliotEliot,Impressions of Theophrastus SuchEnglishEssayFull text
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
Yes. Speculates in dialogue that machines may come to evolve self-supply, self-repair and reproduction and so succeed humans.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
1879GeorgeGeorge,Progress and PovertyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. It was expected that labour-saving inventions would lighten toil and end poverty; instead poverty deepens where machinery is most developed.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
Currently landowners; it should go to the community. Improvements in production raise rent, so landowners capture the gain; the remedy is to tax land values.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
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?
1883FitchFitch,Lectures on TeachingEnglishTreatiseFull text
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?
1883MüllerMüller,India: What Can It Teach Us?EnglishOtherFull 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?
1884FerriFerri,Criminal SociologyItalianTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Positivist psychology refutes free will, so punishment cannot rest on moral guilt; a person is held responsible only because he lives in society, and penalties are social defense.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
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?
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?
1887WilsonWilson,The Study of AdministrationEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
Yes. Administration should be a separate science carried out by trained officials under political direction, kept apart from politics.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
1888BellamyBellamy,Looking Backward, 2000–1887EnglishFictionFull text
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
All citizens equally. The nation owns the mills and machinery, and every citizen receives an equal credit on the annual product.
- Q19Who should receive the benefits when machinery increases the amount a worker can produce?
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?
1889CarpenterCarpenter,Civilisation: Its Cause and CureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. Says locomotives, machinery and telegraphs must be reduced to subjection to the real man instead of remaining objects of 'mere fetish-worship as now'.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1889ZhuangziZhuangzi,Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), 'Heaven and Earth'Classical ChineseTreatiseFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. A gardener refuses a well-sweep that would water a hundred times more ground, saying that cunning implements produce cunning hearts unfit for the Tao.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1890JamesJames,The Principles of PsychologyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Yes. Consciousness is selective and grows more complex where the nervous system is least determinate, which would be useless if it had no effect; the automaton theory is an unwarranted a priori claim.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Yes. James recommends making useful actions habitual so that automatic performance of daily details releases higher mental powers for their own work.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1890LeibnizLeibniz,On the Characteristic Art for Perfecting the Sciences Founded on ReasonLatinEssayFull text
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
De arte characteristica ad perficiendas scientias ratione nitentes
Latin · Essay
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
Yes. Proposes a universal symbolic calculus so that disputants could settle a disagreement by sitting down and saying 'let us calculate'.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1891WildeWilde,The Soul of Man under SocialismEnglishEssayFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
No. Argues that machinery now competes with men but under proper conditions will serve them, and that the future depends on mechanical slavery.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
No. Argues that under proper social arrangements machinery will do all necessary and unpleasant work, freeing people to cultivate themselves; at present it competes with men only because of private ownership.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
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?
1892SaltSalt,Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social ProgressEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Argues that if men have rights so do the lower animals, and rejects doctrines that deny animals feel pain.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
1894TolstoyTolstoy,The Kingdom of God Is Within YouRussianTreatiseFull text
Leo Tolstoy
Царство Божие внутри вас
Russian · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Military drill, by deception, blows and vodka, turns sensible young men into soldiers who would bayonet their own fathers on command.
- Q36Should public officials carry out rules without exercising personal moral judgment?
No. The state spreads each act of violence across many officials, each of whom says he only obeyed orders, so that no one feels responsible; every official must refuse.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1895CarrollCarroll,What the Tortoise Said to AchillesEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Shows in dialogue that a party who accepts the premises can still refuse the conclusion, because each rule of inference added as a new premise demands another rule to apply it.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
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?
1898BellocBelloc,The Modern TravellerEnglishFictionFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Satirical verse whose narrator rests European mastery in Africa on the Maxim gun alone: 'Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.'
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1898KiddKidd,The Control of the TropicsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
Yes. The tropics must be administered by the higher civilizations as a trust, because their resources are needed by the world and their peoples cannot develop them alone.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1898WellsWells,The War of the WorldsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Technically superior Martians treat humans as Europeans treated the Tasmanians, and the narrator asks whether people who exterminated the Tasmanians can complain.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1898Zhang ZhidongZhang Zhidong,Exhortation to LearningChineseTreatiseFull text
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. China should keep the Confucian basis of society and take Western learning only to strengthen its material basis.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
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?
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?
1899KropotkinKropotkin,Fields, Factories and WorkshopsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
No. Argues that the spread of industrial skill and intensive agriculture lets each nation and region produce its own food and manufactures instead of depending on distant specialised centres.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?