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.
24 of 219 works
1901MorganMorgan,RegenerationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- 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.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1902HobsonHobson,Imperialism: A StudyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Hobson rejects the claim that the struggle of races lets the 'socially efficient' justly govern or displace others, and traces imperialism to the interests of finance.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1904VeblenVeblen,The Theory of Business EnterpriseEnglishTreatiseFull 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?
1906FedorovFedorov,The Philosophy of the Common TaskRussianTreatisePartial text
Nikolai Fedorov
Философия общего дела
Russian · Treatise
Partial text · No English translation
Open source →- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Makes the defeat of death and the physical resurrection of all ancestors the common task to which science and technology should be directed.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1907BergsonBergson,Creative EvolutionFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. Neither mechanism nor finalism explains evolution; life is a vital impetus that physics and chemistry do not capture, though he criticizes the older vital-principle theories.
- Q13Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?
No. Distinguishes instinct, which makes organized instruments, from intelligence, which makes unorganized tools, placing machines outside the evolution of life.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
No. Instinct uses organized instruments that are part of the body, while intelligence makes inorganic tools that stay separate from it and can be varied without limit; this separateness defines homo faber.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1907MetchnikoffMetchnikoff,The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic StudiesFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Qualified. Metchnikoff defines orthobiosis as prolonged active, healthy old age followed by satiety of life and a wish for death, expressly distinguishing this ideal from simple prolongation.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1908DrieschDriesch,The Science and Philosophy of the OrganismEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. An embryo fragment can form a whole organism, which no machine could do, so development requires a non-physical ordering factor he calls entelechy.
- 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.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Argues from sea-urchin experiments, where a half-egg still yields a whole larva, that development cannot be the work of a machine and requires a non-mechanical agent he calls entelechy.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1908PoincaréPoincaré,Science and MethodFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Poincaré argues that blind adherence to rules would require infallibility, whereas logicians have encountered contradictions and are revising their rules.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1909BinetBinet,Modern Ideas About ChildrenFrenchTreatiseFull text
Alfred Binet
Les idées modernes sur les enfants
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Qualified. Binet argues that distraction, discomfort or boredom can cause failure on a test, making measurement of a child’s intelligence from very few tests absurd. This is a qualification of testing, not a rejection of all tests.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1909GandhiGandhi,Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home RuleGujaratiTreatiseFull text
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
No. Machinery has impoverished India by destroying handicraft and has begun to desolate Europe; India should do without it.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Argues machinery has impoverished India by destroying hand industry and that Indians should reduce their use of mills and machines and return to hand-spinning and hand-weaving.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Argues modern civilization, whose chief symbol is machinery, is an irreligious condition; true civilization is moral conduct, and India's ancestors chose not to pursue machinery.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
No. Machinery is the chief sign of modern civilization and has impoverished India; India cannot take it up and remain itself.
- Q17Does introducing labor-saving machinery improve workers' lives?
1909SmithSmith,The Teaching of ArithmeticEnglishTreatiseFull text
1912FujisawaFujisawa,Summary Report on the Teaching of Mathematics in JapanEnglishTreatiseFull text
1913HaldaneHaldane,Mechanism, Life and PersonalityEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Neither. The mechanistic theory cannot account for the way an organism maintains and reproduces its own structure, but vitalism is no better; biology needs the organism as its own basic concept.
- 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.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Criticizes the mechanistic theory of life, arguing that the self-maintaining and self-reproducing organization of the organism cannot be explained as the working of a machine.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1913MünsterbergMünsterberg,Psychology and Industrial EfficiencyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Proposes selecting workers, including tram drivers and ship officers, by laboratory tests of the mental traits each job requires.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1915VeblenVeblen,Imperial Germany and the Industrial RevolutionEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. Germany borrowed English machine technology without the English institutions that grew up with it, which let a dynastic state use it; Veblen holds that the machine discipline will erode those older institutions over time.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1916LoebLoeb,The Organism as a Whole, from a Physicochemical ViewpointEnglishTreatiseFull text
- 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.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1917LeninLenin,The State and RevolutionRussianTreatiseFull text
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
Yes. Lenin interprets Marx as requiring the working class to smash ready-made state machinery rather than merely take possession of it.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
1922DarrowDarrow,Crime: Its Cause and TreatmentEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Conduct follows from heredity and environment like the rest of animal life, so the legal idea of free will and personal guilt is a 'gross error' and punishment should give way to treatment.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1922DeweyDewey,Human Nature and ConductEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Depends on whether habit is intelligent or routine. Habit is not mere repetition but an acquired disposition that amounts to will; routine habit enslaves, intelligent habit is the means of action.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1928EddingtonEddington,The Nature of the Physical WorldEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
No. Quantum physics has withdrawn strict causality from the physical world, so physics no longer requires the complete determinism of mind that would rule out volition.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1930FreudFreud,Civilization and Its DiscontentsGermanTreatiseFull text
Sigmund Freud
Das Unbehagen in der Kultur
German · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
Yes. With his auxiliary organs man has become 'a kind of prosthetic God', but the organs have not grown onto him, give him trouble, and have not made him happy.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1931SpenglerSpengler,Man and TechnicsGermanTreatiseFull text
Oswald Spengler
Der Mensch und die Technik
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Treats machine technology as the expression of Western man's will to power, a stage in a culture's life that ends in decline.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. Western technics has become detachable from the Faustian culture that made it, so non-Western peoples can take it up and turn it against the West.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1945Merleau-PontyMerleau-Ponty,Phenomenology of PerceptionFrenchTreatiseIn copyright
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phénoménologie de la perception
French · Treatise
In copyright · No English translation
Open source →- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Yes. The blind man's cane stops being an object in his hand and becomes an extension of his bodily reach; habit incorporates the tool into the body schema.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
1949HartreeHartree,Calculating Instruments and MachinesEnglishTreatiseIn copyright
- 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?