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| la mettrie machine man: Man a Machine ; And, Man a Plant Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1994-01-01 The first modern translation of the complete texts of La Mettrie's pioneering L'Homme machine and L'Homme plante, first published in 1747 and 1748, respectively, this volume also includes translations of the advertisement and dedication to L'Homme machine. Justin Leiber's introduction illuminates the radical thinking and advocacy of the passionate La Mettrie and provides cogent analysis of La Mettrie's relationship to such important philosophical figures as Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and of his lasting influence on the development of materialism, cognitive studies, linguistics, and other areas of intellectual inquiry. |
| la mettrie machine man: La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1996-04-18 Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51), author of Man a Machine (1747), was the most uncompromising of the materialists of the eighteenth century, and the provocative title of his work ensured it a succès de scandale in his own time. This fully annotated edition presents a new English translation of the text together with the most important of La Mettrie's other philosophical works, translated into English for the first time. Ann Thomson's introduction examines his aims and the scandalous moral consequences which he drew from his materialism. |
| la mettrie machine man: Man a Machine Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1927 |
| la mettrie machine man: The Wisdom of Pleasures Julien Offray de la Mettrie, 2018-11-05 He's known for his audacious claim in 'Man a Machine' that humans can be reduced to their mechanism: but La Mettrie wrote other books too. In these hidden gems, the most radical of all Enlightenment thinkers lays bare his hedonistic ideas. In a godless universe that seems to be engineered only around pleasure and pain, how should we act? Should we just give in to all-out debauchery as our destiny, or is there a nobler path?This is the first-ever English translation of these books, which were originally published in 1747 and 1751. |
| la mettrie machine man: Mind and Cosmos Thomas Nagel, 2012-11-22 The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Restless Clock Jessica Riskin, 2016-03-10 A core principle of modern science holds that a scientific explanation must not attribute will or agency to natural phenomena. The Restless Clock examines the origins and history of this, in particular as it applies to the science of living things. This is also the story of a tradition of radicals--dissenters who embraced the opposite view, that agency is an essential and ineradicable part of nature. Beginning with the church and courtly automata of early modern Europe, Jessica Riskin guides us through our thinking about the extent to which animals might be understood as mere machines. We encounter fantastic robots and cyborgs as well as a cast of scientific and philosophical luminaries, including Descartes and Leibnitz, Lamarck and Darwin, whose ideas gain new relevance in Riskin's hands. The book ends with a riveting discussion of how the dialectic continues in genetics, epigenetics, and evolutionary biology, where work continues to naturalize different forms of agency. The Restless Clock reveals the deeply buried roots of current debates in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology. |
| la mettrie machine man: LaMettrie's L'Homme Machine Aram Vartanian, 2015-12-08 As a classic of the French Enlightenment, L'Homme Machine has in the past been of equal interest to students of philosophy, science, and literature. The present edition offers the first established text, with extensive notes. In his introduction, Dr. Vartanian discusses La Mettrie's thesis, its sources, the place of the man-machine idea in the development of La Mettrie's materialism, and its critical impact on the intellectual struggles of the eighteenth century. Originally published in 1960. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Origin of Individuals Jean-Jacques Kupiec, 2009 In the 17th century, Descartes put forth the metaphor of the machine to explain the functioning of living beings. In the 18th century, La Mettrie extended the metaphor to man. The clock was then used as the paradigm of the machine. In the 20th century, this metaphor still held but the clock was replaced by a computer. Nowadays, the organism is viewed as a robot obeying signals emanating from a computer program controlled by genetic information. This book shows that such a conception leads to contradictions not only in the theory of biology but also in its experimental research program, thereby impeding its development. The analysis of this problem is based on the most recent experimental data obtained in molecular biology as well as the history and philosophy of biology. It shows that the machine theory did not succeed in breaking with Aristotle's finalism. The book presents a new approach to biological systems based on cellular Darwinism. Genes are ruled by probabilistic mechanisms allowing cells to differentiate stochastically. Embryo development is not governed by a determinist genetic program but by natural selection occurring among cell populations inside the organism. This theory has considerable philosophical consequences. Man may be a machine but he is a random one. |
| la mettrie machine man: From Beast-machine to Man-machine Leonora Cohen Rosenfield, 1968 |
| la mettrie machine man: Machines as the Measure of Men Michael Adas, 1989 This new edition of what has become a standard account of Western expansion and technological dominance includes a new preface by the author that discusses how subsequent developments in gender and race studies, as well as global technology and politics, enter into conversation with his original arguments. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Turing Test Stuart M. Shieber, 2004-06-18 Historical and contemporary papers on the philosophical issues raised by the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. The Turing Test is part of the vocabulary of popular culture—it has appeared in works ranging from the Broadway play Breaking the Code to the comic strip Robotman. The writings collected by Stuart Shieber for this book examine the profound philosophical issues surrounding the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. Alan Turing's idea, originally expressed in a 1950 paper titled Computing Machinery and Intelligence and published in the journal Mind, proposed an indistinguishability test that compared artifact and person. Following Descartes's dictum that it is the ability to speak that distinguishes human from beast, Turing proposed to test whether machine and person were indistinguishable in regard to verbal ability. He was not, as is often assumed, answering the question Can machines think? but proposing a more concrete way to ask it. Turing's proposed thought experiment encapsulates the issues that the writings in The Turing Test define and discuss. The first section of the book contains writings by philosophical precursors, including Descartes, who first proposed the idea of indistinguishablity tests. The second section contains all of Turing's writings on the Turing Test, including not only the Mind paper but also less familiar ephemeral material. The final section opens with responses to Turing's paper published in Mind soon after it first appeared. The bulk of this section, however, consists of papers from a broad spectrum of scholars in the field that directly address the issue of the Turing Test as a test for intelligence. Contributors John R. Searle, Ned Block, Daniel C. Dennett, and Noam Chomsky (in a previously unpublished paper). Each chapter is introduced by background material that can also be read as a self-contained essay on the Turing Test |
| la mettrie machine man: Edison's Eve Gaby Wood, 2003-07-08 During the eighteenth century, the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck that seemingly could digest and excrete its food. A few decades later, Europeans fell in love with “the Turk,” a celebrated chess-playing machine built in 1769. Thomas Edison was obsessed for years with making a talking mechanical doll, one of his few failures as an inventor. In our own time, scientists at MIT are trying to build a robot with emotions of its own. What lies behind our age-old pursuit to create mechanical life? What does this pursuit tell us about human nature? In Edison’s Eve Gaby Wood traces the history of robotics, from its most brilliant inventions to its most ingenious hoaxes. Joining lively anecdote with literary, cultural, and philosophical insights, Wood offers a captivating and learned work of science and history. |
| la mettrie machine man: The History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Present Importance: History of materialism until Kant Friedrich Albert Lange, Ernest Chester Thomas, 1879 |
| la mettrie machine man: Conscious Robots Paul Kwatz, 2013-06-27 Lives up to all the hype An absolutely necessary book, Should be taught in schools, Dynamite, this is a brilliant book - see the reviews on Amazon.com. The Future's Most important Book: -- Why we're so convinced that we're in charge when we're really just carrying out evolution's instructions -- Why our lives, as Buddha suggested, are inherently unsatisfactory, despite our luxurious homes, successful careers and loving families -- How humans will one day take control of their conscious minds, get happy and stay happy. And the real reason Aliens haven't visited the Earth yet... 107 minutes (average read time) to change the way you think about everything. Easy to understand and persuasive Fun, short, insightful Bad Ass |
| la mettrie machine man: The Mechanical Mind Tim Crane, 2003-04-24 A fascinating exploration of the theories and arguments surrounding the notions of thought and representation. Now in its 2nd edition, Cranes's classic text has introduced thousands to some of the most important ideas in philosophy of mind. |
| la mettrie machine man: Sophie's World Jostein Gaarder, 1994 The protagonists are Sophie Amundsen, a 14-year-old girl, and Alberto Knox, her philosophy teacher. The novel chronicles their metaphysical relationship as they study Western philosophy from its beginnings to the present. A bestseller in Norway. |
| la mettrie machine man: Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century , 2021-12-13 How did humans respond to the eighteenth-century discovery of countless new species of animals? This book explores the gamut of intense human-animal interactions: from love to cultural identifications, moral reflections, philosophical debates, classification systems, mechanical copies, insults and literary creativity. Dogs, cats and horses, of course, play central roles. But this volume also features human reflections upon parrots, songbirds, monkeys, a rhino, an elephant, pigs, and geese – all the way through to the admired silkworms and the not-so-admired bookworms. An exceptionally wide array of source materials are used in this volume’s ten separate contributions, plus the editorial introduction, to demonstrate this diversity. As eighteenth-century humans came to realise that they too are animals, they had to recast their relationships with their fellow living-beings on Planet Earth. And these considerations remain very much live ones to this day. |
| la mettrie machine man: Exploring Happiness Sissela Bok, 2010-01-01 Examines the nature of happiness, discussing how it has been treated in philosophy and religion and by the modern disciplines of psychology, economics, and neurocience, and considers the place of individual happiness within the context of modern life. |
| la mettrie machine man: Apocalypse Culture 2 Adam Parfrey, 2000 |
| la mettrie machine man: The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century philosophy. 1 Knud Haakonssen, 2006 |
| la mettrie machine man: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon Lawrence Nolan, 2015-01-01 The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon is the definitive reference source on René Descartes, 'the father of modern philosophy' and arguably among the most important philosophers of all time. Examining the full range of Descartes' achievements and legacy, it includes 256 in-depth entries that explain key concepts relating to his thought. Cumulatively they uncover interpretative disputes, trace his influences, and explain how his work was received by critics and developed by followers. There are entries on topics such as certainty, cogito ergo sum, doubt, dualism, free will, God, geometry, happiness, human being, knowledge, Meditations on First Philosophy, mind, passion, physics, and virtue, which are written by the largest and most distinguished team of Cartesian scholars ever assembled for a collaborative research project - 92 contributors from ten countries. |
| la mettrie machine man: Darwin Day in America John G. West, 2014-04-22 At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and politicians giddily predicted that science—especially Darwinian biology—would supply solutions to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to poverty to sexual maladjustment. Instead, politics and culture were dehumanized as scientific experts began treating human beings as little more than animals or machines. In criminal justice, these experts denied the existence of free will and proposed replacing punishment with invasive “cures” such as the lobotomy. In welfare, they proposed eliminating the poor by sterilizing those deemed biologically unfit. In business, they urged the selection of workers based on racist theories of human evolution and the development of advertising methods to more effectively manipulate consumer behavior. In sex education, they advocated creating a new sexual morality based on “normal mammalian behavior” without regard to longstanding ethical and religious imperatives. Based on extensive research with primary sources and archival materials, John G. West’s captivating Darwin Day in America tells the story of how American public policy has been corrupted by scientistic ideology. Marshaling fascinating anecdotes and damning quotations, West’s narrative explores the far-reaching consequences for society when scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between human beings and the rest of nature. It also exposes the disastrous results that ensue when experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong. West concludes with a powerful plea for the restoration of democratic accountability in an age of experts. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Fourth Discontinuity Bruce Mazlish, 1993-01-01 Discusses the relationship between humans and machines, pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical and of computer robots being programmed to think. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons and discusses ideas of previous centuries and of individuals on this subject. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Book of Dead Philosophers Simon Critchley, 2008 Diogenes died by holding his breath. Plato allegedly died of a lice infestation. Diderot choked to death on an apricot. Nietzsche made a long, soft-brained and dribbling descent into oblivion after kissing a horse in Turin. From the self-mocking haikus of Zen masters on their deathbeds to the last words (gasps) of modern-day sages, The Book of Dead Philosophers chronicles the deaths of almost 200 philosophers-tales of weirdness, madness, suicide, murder, pathos and bad luck. In this elegant and amusing book, Simon Critchley argues that the question of what constitutes a 'good death' has been the central preoccupation of philosophy since ancient times. As he brilliantly demonstrates, looking at what the great thinkers have said about death inspires a life-affirming enquiry into the meaning and possibility of human happiness. In learning how to die, we learn how to live. |
| la mettrie machine man: Strategic Alliances as Social Facts Mark De Rond, 2003-06-19 How can we explain a proliferation of alliances when the probability of failure is higher than success? And why have we emphasized their order, manageability and predictability whilst acknowledging that they tend to be experienced as messy, politically charged and unpredictable? Mark de Rond, in this provocative book, sets out to address such paradoxes. Based on in-depth case studies of three major biotechnology alliances, he suggests that we need theories to explain idiosyncracy as well as social order. He argues that such theories must allow for social conduct to be active and self-directed but simultaneously inert and constrained, thus permitting voluntarism, determinism, and serendipity alike to explain causation in alliance life. The book offers a highly original combination of insights from social theory and intellectual history with more mainstream strategic management and organizations literature. It is a refreshing and thought-provoking analysis that will appeal to practitioner and academic researcher alike. |
| la mettrie machine man: Smart Technologies and Fundamental Rights John-Stewart Gordon, 2020-12-10 Smart Technologies and Fundamental Rights covers a broad range of vital topics that highlight the ethical, socio-political, and legal challenges as well as technical issues of AI with respect to fundamental rights. Either humanity will greatly profit from the use of AI in almost all domains in human life that may eventually lead to a much better and more humane society. Or, it could be the case that people may misuse AI for idiosyncratic purposes as well as intelligent machines may turn against human beings. Therefore, we should be extremely cautious with respect to the technological development of AI because we might not be able to control the machines once they reached a certain level of sophistication-- |
| la mettrie machine man: Psychologizing Patrick M. Whitehead, 2016-09-14 Psychologizing introduces students to the study of psychology by encouraging them to approach the subject on a personal level. Classroom-tested, the psychologizing model emphasizes learning through practice. A conversational and highly engaging narrative prompts students to begin thinking like psychologists as they examine key concepts, including learning, development, personality, and emotion. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Turing Test James H. Moor, 2012-12-06 In 1950 Alan Turing (1912-1954) published his famous article, Computing Machinery and Intelligence in the journal Mind. This article is arguably the most influential and widely read article in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. Indeed, most of the debate in the philosophy of artificial intelligence over the last fifty years concerns issues that were raised and discussed by Turing. Turing's genius was not only in developing the theory of computability but also in understanding the impact, both practical and philosophical, that computing machinery would have. Turing believed that computers, if properly designed and educated, could exhibit intelligent behavior, even behavior that would be indistinguishable from human intelligent behavior. His vision of the possibility of machine intelligence has been highly inspiring and extremely controversial. In this classic article Turing presented his well known imitation game and predicted that about the year 2000 an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning in the imitation game. Based on the results of the Loebner 2000 contest and the accomplishments in the field of AI, as impressive as they are, Turing's prediction remains unfulfilled. |
| la mettrie machine man: Materialism and Politics Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, Ayşe Yuva, 2021-03-02 What remains of materialism’s subversive potential — i.e., its ties with heresy or atheism and republicanism or communism — and to what extent does this concept still interpellate us politically and philosophically? As neoliberal policies expanded far beyond the state, their mechanisms of control seeped into the materiality of social reproduction, solidifying a conception of matter as something inert, to be appropriated, manipulated, and exploited. If in this context the subversive nature of a reference to materiality is called into question, it has also provoked new forms of resistance, as well as fundamental reconsiderations of the political implications of the notion of ‘matter’. Against this background, the aim of this book is to show the diversity within continued engagements with materialism as a central concept for progressive politics, be it in the direction opened up by New Materialism, in renewed forms of Marxist and Spinozist based approaches, or in feminist analyses, each in their own terms, without excluding the possibility of alliances between them. Finally, this volume insists that the study of materiality and materialist approaches does not amount to a renunciation of philosophy, but rather urges us to broaden the task of philosophical thought in order to reconsider the historical and, in every sense of the word, material situatedness of all philosophical problems. Against a reductive and ahistorical conception of materialism — the straightest way back to ideology —, this book offers an analysis of its diverse emancipatory potentialities. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Atheist's Bible: Diderot's 'Éléments de physiologie' Caroline Warman, 2020-11-16 ‘Love is harder to explain than hunger, for a piece of fruit does not feel the desire to be eaten’: Denis Diderot’s Éléments de physiologie presents a world in flux, turning on the relationship between man, matter and mind. In this late work, Diderot delves playfully into the relationship between bodily sensation, emotion and perception, and asks his readers what it means to be human in the absence of a soul. The Atheist’s Bible challenges prevailing scholarly views on Diderot’s Éléments, asserting its contemporary philosophical importance, and prompting its readers to inspect more closely this little-known and little-studied work. In this timely volume, Warman establishes the place of Diderot’s Éléments in the trajectory of materialist theories of nature and the mind stretching back to Epicurus and Lucretius, and explores the fascinating reasons behind scholarly neglect of this seminal work. In turn, Warman outlines the hitherto unacknowledged dissemination and reception of Diderot’s Éléments, demonstrating how Diderot’s Éléments was circulated in manuscript-form as early as the 1790s, thus showing how the text came to influence the next generations of materialist thinkers. This book is accompanied by a digital edition of Jacques-André Naigeon’s Mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur la vie et les ouvrages de Denis Diderot (1823), a work which, Warman argues, represents the first publication of Diderot’s Éléments, long before its official publication date of 1875. The Atheist’s Bible constitutes a major contribution to the field of Diderot studies, and will be of further interest to scholars and students of materialist natural philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment and beyond. |
| la mettrie machine man: Reconstructing Woman Dorothy Kelly, 2010-11 Reconstructing Woman explores a scenario common to the works of four major French novelists of the nineteenth century: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Villiers. In the texts of each author, a &“new Pygmalion&” (as Balzac calls one of his characters) turns away from a real woman he has loved or desired and prefers instead his artificial re-creation of her. All four authors also portray the possibility that this simulacrum, which replaces the woman, could become real. The central chapters examine this plot and its meanings in multiple texts of each author (with the exception of the chapter on Villiers, in which only &“L&’Eve future&” is considered). The premise is that this shared scenario stems from the discovery in the nineteenth century that humans are transformable. Because scientific innovations play a major part in this discovery, Dorothy Kelly reviews some of the contributing trends that attracted one or more of the authors: mesmerism, dissection, transformism, and evolution, new understandings of human reproduction, spontaneous generation, puericulture, the experimental method. These ideas and practices provided the novelists with a scientific context in which controlling, changing, and creating human bodies became imaginable. At the same time, these authors explore the ways in which not only bodies but also identity can be made. In close readings, Kelly shows how these narratives reveal that linguistic and coded social structures shape human identity. Furthermore, through the representation of the power of language to do that shaping, the authors envision that their own texts would perform that function. The symbol of the reconstruction of woman thus embodies the fantasy and desire that their novels could create or transform both reality and their readers in quite literal ways. Through literary analyses, we can deduce from the texts just why this artificial creation is a woman. |
| la mettrie machine man: The Body of Nature and Culture Rod Giblett, 2008-10-14 This book explores the relationship of human bodies with natural and cultural environments, arguing that these categories are linked and intertwined. It argues for an environmentally sustainable and healthy relationship between the body and the earth. |
| la mettrie machine man: Micro and Macro Philosophy: Organicism in Biology, Philosophy, and Politics Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, 2020-10-26 What role can philosophy play in a world dominated by neoliberalism and globalization? Must it join universalist ideologies as it did in past centuries? Or might it turn to ethnophilosophy and postmodern fragmentation? Micro and Macro Philosophy argues that universalist cosmopolitanism and egocentric culturalism are not the only alternatives. Western philosophy has created a false dichotomy. A better solution can be found in an organic philosophy that functions through micro-macro interactions. According to biologists, the twentieth century was the century of the gene, while the twenty-first century is destined to be the century of the organic. Micro and Macro Philosophy attempts to establish such a view in philosophy: by highlighting micro-macro patterns found in history, it seeks to design new ways of organic thinking in the human sciences. |
| la mettrie machine man: Somebodies and Nobodies Robert W. Fuller, 2003 Reexamines the prerogatives that accompany status in relations between individuals, groups, and nations. Many of the difficulties faced in personal relationships, schools, and the workplace stem from the misuse of power associated with rank. [Note to the reader]. |
| la mettrie machine man: The French Enlightenment and the Emergence of Modern Cynicism Sharon A. Stanley, 2012-03-19 Sharon A. Stanley chronicles the emergence of a recognizably modern form of cynicism during the French Enlightenment, by discussing the work of philosophers such as Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While recent scholarly and popular commentary has depicted cynicism as a novel, contemporary phenomenon that threatens healthy democratic functioning, this book shows that cynicism has much earlier roots and may contribute to the health of democracies. |
| la mettrie machine man: Man A Machine Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 2023-10-01 Man a Machine by Julien Offray de La Mettrie: Explore the fascinating intersection of philosophy and science in Man a Machine by Julien Offray de La Mettrie. This thought-provoking work delves into the nature of human beings, examining the idea of humans as complex machines governed by biological and physiological processes. Key Aspects of the Book “Man a Machine”: Challenges traditional notions of human nature and consciousness, proposing a mechanistic view of human beings. Explores the relationship between mind and body, discussing the interconnectedness of physical and mental processes. Raises philosophical questions about free will, determinism, and the implications of viewing humans as machines. Julien Offray de La Mettrie, an audacious French physician and philosopher of the 18th century, challenged conventional thinking with his provocative writings. La Mettrie's most notable work, L'Homme Machine (Man a Machine), presented a materialistic view of human nature, arguing that human beings were complex machines governed by physical and physiological processes. This controversial perspective sparked intense debates and made La Mettrie a polarizing figure in intellectual circles. His bold exploration of the relationship between mind and body laid the groundwork for later philosophical and scientific inquiries. |
| la mettrie machine man: Early Utilitarians Ken Binmore, 2021-09-11 People who put the public good before their own self interest have been admired throughout history. But what is the public good? Sages and prophets who think they know better what is good for us than we know ourselves held sway on this subject for more than two thousand years. The world had to wait for the Enlightenment that burst upon the world in the eighteenth century for an account of the public good free from the prejudices of the privileged classes. Utilitarianism is our name for this new way of thinking about morality. Francis Hutcheson encapsulated its aims by inventing its catchphrase “The greatest happiness for the greatest number’’ fifty years before Jeremy Bentham, to whom the slogan is usually attributed. But what is happiness? Why did Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill prefer to speak of utility? How did economists develop this notion? Does it really make sense to compare the utilities of different people? Bob may complain more than Alice in the dentist’s chair, but is he really suffering more? Why should I put the sum of everybody’s utility before my own utility? This short book asks how such questions arose from the social and political realities of the times in which the early utilitarians lived. Nobody need fear being crushed by heavy metaphysical reasoning or incomprehensible algebra when this story is told. This book argues that the answers to all the questions that the early utilitarians found so difficult are transparent when we stand upon their shoulders to look back upon their work. The problem for the early utilitarians was to free themselves from the prejudices of their time. The lesson for us is perhaps that we too need to free ourselves from the prejudices of our own time. |
| la mettrie machine man: Descartes's Theory of Mind Desmond M. Clarke, 2005 Descartes is possibly the most famous of all writers on the mind, but his theory of mind has been almost universally misunderstood, because his philosophy has not been seen in the context of his scientific work. Desmond Clarke offers a radical and convincing rereading, undoing the received perception of Descartes as the chief defender of mind/body dualism. For Clarke, the key is to interpret his philosophical efforts as an attempt to reconcile his scientific pursuits with the theologically orthodox views of his time. |
| la mettrie machine man: Machines Who Think Pamela McCorduck, Cli Cfe, 2004-03-17 This book is a history of artificial intelligence, that audacious effort to duplicate in an artifact what we consider to be our most important property—our intelligence. It is an invitation for anybody with an interest in the future of the human race to participate in the inquiry. |
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