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.
93 of 219 works
c. 340 BCEAristotleAristotle,Nicomachean EthicsGreekTreatiseFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Defines equity as the correction of law where it is defective because of its generality, and says the judge should decide as the legislator would have if present.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
c. 330 BCEAristotleAristotle,PoliticsGreekTreatiseFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
No. Says that if shuttles wove by themselves, master workmen would need no assistants and masters no slaves, so self-working instruments would serve rather than rule.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Yes. Calls a slave an animated instrument and property, and says that if tools could work of themselves, like the statues of Daedalus, masters would not need slaves.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1614NapierNapier,Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis DescriptioLatinTreatiseFull text
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
No. Logarithms spare calculators the tedium of long multiplications and divisions and the slippery errors they cause.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
1620BaconBacon,Novum OrganumLatinTreatiseFull 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?
1637DescartesDescartes,Discourse on MethodFrenchTreatiseFull text
René Descartes
Discours de la méthode
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
No. A machine could utter words but could never arrange them to answer the sense of whatever is said to it, as the dullest human can; this shows it lacks reason.
- Q03Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?
No. Machines act only from the disposition of their organs, which must be arranged for each particular action, while reason is a universal instrument usable in any circumstance.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Hopes that a practical science of nature will free people from countless diseases and perhaps from the infirmities of old age.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
No. Argues animals are machines made by God whose actions follow from the disposition of their organs, and that they lack reason and a rational soul.
- Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?
No. A machine might utter words in response to a touch, but it could never arrange words to answer the meaning of whatever is said to it, as even the dullest person can.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1651HobbesHobbes,LeviathanEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
No. Argues a parent's dominion over a child does not derive from having begotten it but from the child's consent.
- Q35Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?
No. Hobbes criticizes private conscience as a competing judge of good and evil where civil law has determined the matter, arguing that competing private judgments would divide the commonwealth.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
1663Huang ZongxiHuang Zongxi,Waiting for the DawnChineseTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
No. Criticizes the examination system for selecting officials by a narrow written test, and proposes several alternative routes of recruitment such as recommendation and appointment.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1664DescartesDescartes,The Description of the Human BodyFrenchTreatiseFull text
René Descartes
La Description du corps humain
French · 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. Explains the living body's functions by the motion of matter alone, and states that explaining them requires explaining how the animal forms from its beginning by the same mechanical laws.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1668CordemoyCordemoy,A Philosophicall Discourse Concerning SpeechFrenchTreatiseFull text
Géraud de Cordemoy
Discours physique de la parole
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
Yes. I know other bodies have minds like mine because their speech is new, fitting and cannot be explained by mechanical principles alone.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1670PascalPascal,PenséesFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
No. Distinguishes the geometrical mind, which reasons from explicit principles, from the intuitive mind (esprit de finesse), which grasps principles too many and subtle to state, and says the two cannot be reduced to each other.
- Q10Can a fixed procedure for reasoning settle a disagreement when the participants accept the same premises?
1674MalebrancheMalebranche,The Search after TruthFrenchTreatiseFull text
Nicolas Malebranche
De la recherche de la vérité
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
No. There is no necessary connection between my will to move my arm and its motion; I do not know how to move it, so God is the true cause and my will only the occasion.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1680FilmerFilmer,Patriarcha: or, the Natural Power of KingsEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Yes. Filmer treats patriarchal dominion as sovereign power, explicitly invoking life-and-death judgment, war and treaty making. The argument concerns paternal rule, not directly the manufacture of an intelligent being.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
1689LockeLocke,Second Treatise of GovernmentEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
Both. Argues men are God's property because they are his workmanship, but that human parents do not own children they beget, since children are the workmanship of their maker, the Almighty.
- Q29Would creating an intelligent being give its maker the right to own it?
1694LockeLocke,An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Places personal identity in continuity of consciousness, not in the body, so a person who loses a limb, or whose consciousness follows a severed finger, remains the same self.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1739HumeHume,A Treatise of Human NatureEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
No. Argues that we ascribe identity to a ship or body whose parts are gradually replaced only because the change is gradual, and that this identity is a fiction of the imagination.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1747La MettrieLa Mettrie,Man a MachineFrenchTreatiseFull text
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
L'Homme machine
French · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
Yes. Proposes that an ape could be taught language by Amman's method for the deaf, after which it would be a little gentleman; speech is a trained bodily capacity, not proof of an immaterial soul.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. The soul's faculties vary with the state of the brain, body, food and illness, so the whole person is a self-winding machine whose states follow from its organization.
- Q02Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?
1748HumeHume,An Enquiry concerning Human UnderstandingEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
Undecided. We feel the arm move when we will it, but the power by which will produces motion is unknown and inconceivable; we observe only constant conjunction.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
Yes. Actions are caused by character and motives like any natural event, and this necessity is what makes praise and blame possible; an uncaused act would reflect nothing about the person.
- Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?
1748MontesquieuMontesquieu,The Spirit of the LawsFrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
Yes. Says judges should be only the mouth that pronounces the words of the law, inanimate beings who cannot moderate its force or severity.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1755RousseauRousseau,Discourse on the Origin of InequalityFrenchTreatiseFull text
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
No. The savage's body is his only instrument and is stronger for it; had he an axe, a sling or a horse he would lose the strength and speed he now has.
- Q38When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?
1759WolffWolff,Theory of GenerationLatinTreatiseFull text
Caspar Friedrich Wolff
Theoria generationis
Latin · 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?
No. Argues against preformation that the embryo forms by epigenesis from unorganized matter, and attributes the forming to an essential force (vis essentialis) rather than to a pre-built mechanism.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1762RousseauRousseau,EmileFrenchTreatiseFull text
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Émile, ou De l'éducation
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
No. The only habit a child should form is to have no habits, so that he keeps control of his liberty and strength.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Weakens. A child should not want to eat, sleep or do anything at fixed hours, so he keeps control of his own liberty.
- Q24Does using calculating devices weaken the ability to calculate without them?
Yes. The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser our senses; instruments like the theodolite let us neglect judging angles and distances ourselves.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1764BeccariaBeccaria,On Crimes and PunishmentsItalianTreatiseFull text
Cesare Beccaria
Dei delitti e delle pene
Italian · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
Yes. Holds that criminal judges must not interpret the law or consult its 'spirit', but apply it by a single syllogism, since interpretation opens the door to arbitrary judgment.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1764VoltaireVoltaire,Philosophical Dictionary, 'Animals'FrenchTreatiseFull text
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Attacks the Cartesian view of animals as machines: a dog dissected alive has all the organs of feeling, and nature did not give it nerves in order that it should not feel.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
1765BlackstoneBlackstone,Commentaries on the Laws of EnglandEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
Yes. Allows equity to correct law's generality but holds that law without equity, though hard, is better than equity without law, which would make every judge a legislator.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1770ThiryThiry,The System of NatureFrenchTreatiseFull text
Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach
Système de la nature
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
Yes. Man is part of nature and every act of will is determined by motives that act on the brain, so free agency is an illusion.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1776SmithSmith,An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsEnglishTreatiseFull 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?
1785ReidReid,Essays on the Intellectual Powers of ManEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Reid argues that amputation does not divide the person: the enduring self is indivisible even though its thoughts, actions and feelings change.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1788ReidReid,Essays on the Active Powers of ManEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Moral accountability requires a real power to will or not will an action; if every act were necessitated, no one would be responsible.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1789BenthamBentham,An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and LegislationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
Yes. Argues that what matters for moral standing is not whether a being can reason or talk but whether it can suffer.
- Q28Would the capacity to suffer give an artificial being a claim to humane treatment?
1789BlumenbachBlumenbach,An Essay on GenerationGermanTreatiseFull text
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Über den Bildungstrieb
German · Treatise
Full text · Period translation
Open source →- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Blumenbach denies pre-existing organized germs and defines formative nisus as a distinctive force of generation, growth, nutrition and reproduction.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
1790KantKant,Critique of JudgementGermanTreatiseFull text
Immanuel Kant
Kritik der Urteilskraft
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- 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. Holds that an organized being is not a mere machine, because a machine has only motive power while an organism has a formative power that it passes to matter and that reproduces and repairs its own parts.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1792WollstonecraftWollstonecraft,A Vindication of the Rights of WomanEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
Yes. Standing armies and women's education both train blind obedience; strengthening the mind would end it.
- Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?
1793GodwinGodwin,Enquiry Concerning Political JusticeEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Speculates that mind will gain power over matter and that human life may be greatly prolonged once society is rationally ordered.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1795CondorcetCondorcet,Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human MindFrenchTreatiseFull text
Condorcet
Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain
French · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
Yes. Asks whether the interval between birth and decay might have no assignable limit, and expects medicine and better living to lengthen life indefinitely.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
1798KantKant,Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of ViewGermanTreatiseFull text
Immanuel Kant
Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht
German · Treatise
Full text · No English translation
Open source →- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
No. Habit is a physical compulsion to go on as before; it takes the moral worth from good acts because it impairs freedom of mind, so as a rule all habit is objectionable.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1798MalthusMalthus,An Essay on the Principle of PopulationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
No. Rejects Condorcet's indefinite prolongation of life, arguing that a partial improvement whose limit is unknown does not show that improvement is unlimited.
- Q15Should extending human life indefinitely be a goal of technical progress?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
1883FitchFitch,Lectures on TeachingEnglishTreatiseFull text
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?