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.
8 of 219 works
1901PearsonPearson,National Life from the Standpoint of ScienceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
Yes. Progress comes through struggle between races, and a scientifically efficient nation is justified in displacing less efficient peoples.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1912LoebLoeb,The Mechanistic Conception of LifeEnglishEssayFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
No. Life phenomena, including development and instinct, can be explained by physics and chemistry, and experimental control of them removes the need for a vital principle.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
Yes. Argues from artificial parthenogenesis and tropism experiments that life processes, including the start of development of the egg, can be explained by physics and chemistry.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1917TagoreTagore,NationalismEnglishEssayFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Argues the West has turned society into a machine of commerce and politics whose aim is success, not goodness, eliminating moral responsibility.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Conditional. Japan can take Western science only if it assimilates it to its own character; if it copies Western nationalism it becomes a borrowed machine left with only borrowed weapons.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1924HaldaneHaldane,Daedalus, or Science and the FutureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
No. Uses Daedalus, who caused the death of Minos yet was never punished, to argue that the scientific worker is not concerned with gods and that mankind must adjust its morality to the powers science gives it.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1924RussellRussell,Icarus, or the Future of ScienceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
No. Argues science only lets the holders of power realise their purposes more fully; whether it does good or harm depends on those purposes, which at present are mostly evil.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1925HaldaneHaldane,Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical WarfareEnglishEssayFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
No. Argues gas weapons such as tear gas are more humane than shells and bayonets, and that the Hague ban on gas projectiles was well meant but misguided.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1929BernalBernal,The World, the Flesh and the DevilEnglishEssayFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Proposes replacing the body organ by organ with mechanisms until the person is a brain in a cylinder linked to artificial senses, and treats this as the same mind continuing.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1949JeffersonJefferson,The Mind of Mechanical Man (Lister Oration)EnglishEssayIn copyright
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
No. A machine that produces sonnets or answers is not thinking unless it writes them from felt thoughts and emotions and knows that it has done so.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?