Is the human being a machine?

Whether human action is fully determined by mechanism, and what is left of freedom if it is.

Direction Machine-like humans
Span 1674–1928
Questions 3
Works 21
Languages French, English, German, Italian

  1. Q04Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?

    Yes3

    • 1859Biran, Essay on the Foundations of Psychology

      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.

    • 1874Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology

      Much mental activity is automatic and physically caused, but the Will is an independent power that controls and directs that activity.

    • 1890James, The Principles of Psychology

      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.

    No4

    • 1674Malebranche, The Search after Truth

      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.

    • 1870Hodgson, The Theory of Practice: An Ethical Enquiry

      Neural events form a closed causal chain; states of consciousness are always conditioned by them and never condition them.

    • 1874Huxley, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History

      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.

    • 1874Clifford, Body and Mind

      Mind and body are strictly correlated and physical events have only physical causes, so feelings run alongside the nervous process without acting on it.

    Undecided1

  2. Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?

    Yes4

    • 1747La Mettrie, Man a Machine

      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.

    • 1770Thiry, The System of Nature

      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.

    • 1855Büchner, Force and Matter

      There is no force without matter and no mind without brain; thought and will are functions of brain matter under natural law.

    • 1899Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe

      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.

    No2

    • 1889Bergson, Time and Free Will

      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.

    • 1928Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

      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.

    Unresolved1

    • 1880Bois-Reymond, The Seven World-Riddles

      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.

  3. Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?

    Yes2

    • 1748Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

      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.

    • 1843Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

      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.

    No4

    • 1788Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man

      Moral accountability requires a real power to will or not will an action; if every act were necessitated, no one would be responsible.

    • 1813Owen, A New View of Society

      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.

    • 1884Ferri, Criminal Sociology

      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.

    • 1922Darrow, Crime: Its Cause and Treatment

      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.

    Satire1

    • 1872Butler, Erewhon

      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.