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.
27 of 219 works
c. 8 CEOvidOvid,MetamorphosesLatinFictionFull 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.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1627BaconBacon,New AtlantisEnglishFictionFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
Yes. The scientists of Salomon's House consult on which of their inventions to publish and swear an oath to keep secret those they think fit, revealing some only to the state.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1726SwiftSwift,Gulliver's TravelsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
No. Gulliver's wish for endless life collapses when he meets the Struldbruggs, immortals who keep ageing and become wretched.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1762RousseauRousseau,Pygmalion, lyric sceneFrenchFictionFull text
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Pygmalion, scène lyrique
French · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- 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.
- Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?
1778GoetheGoethe,The Triumph of SensibilityGermanFictionFull text
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit
German · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. Satire in which Prince Oronaro prefers a doll stuffed with sentimental novels to the real queen; the play mocks a love that needs nothing back.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
1909ForsterForster,The Machine StopsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Depicts a humanity that lives underground wholly dependent on and worshipping a Machine, which collapses and kills them.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Kuno says the Machine has robbed people of spatial and tactile capacities, weakened relationships, paralyzed bodies and wills, and compelled worship. This is his speech, not the later narrated collapse.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. People consult the Book of the Machine as scripture and come to worship the Machine that serves them.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1914WellsWells,The World Set FreeEnglishFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. The narrator describes Holsten’s fear of his discovery’s consequences and his thought that publication might be premature. His later disclaimer of unforeseeable consequences is a separate passage.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1918BaumBaum,The Tin Woodman of OzEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Contested. The Tin Woodman, whose flesh was replaced piece by piece with tin, meets his old living head, which denies that the tin man is the same person.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1920ČapekČapek,R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)CzechFictionFull text
Karel Čapek
R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti)
Czech · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Robots built to free humans from labour outnumber them, revolt and exterminate them.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Both. Dr Gall adds pain nerves to the Robots only so they will not damage themselves; asked if they will be happier, he says no, only more perfect technically, while Helena's Humanity League campaigns for them.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Both. Robots are manufactured and sold by a company as products; the play ends with their revolt against their makers.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1924ČapekČapek,KrakatitCzechFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. In the final chapter, the old man whom Prokop recognizes as God urges him to abandon destructive work and start again with useful energy. This makes responsibility an obligation to redirect invention; it is not a legal rule about every unintended harm. Quoted from Lawrence Hyde’s 1925 English translation of the 1924 Czech novel.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1924ZamyatinZamyatin,WeRussianFictionFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. The narrator praises the Tables of Hours that fix when everyone rises, works, eats and walks, and hopes to absorb even the two personal hours; the novel shows this as the end of freedom.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1925BelyaevBelyaev,Professor Dowell's HeadRussianFictionFull text
Alexander Belyaev
Голова профессора Доуэля
Russian · Fiction
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. A scientist's severed head is kept alive by machines and remains himself, thinking and suffering, without a body.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1931JonesJones,The Jameson SatelliteEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Aliens place a dead professor's preserved brain in a mechanical body and he continues as himself.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?