Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. concern, and if at the same time he were entirely ignorant of all physical science, would he not have Consciousness, in anything like the present acceptation of the term, having been once a new thing—a thing, as far as we can see, subsequent even to an individual center of action and to a reproductive system (which we see existing in plants without apparent consciousness)—why may not there arise some new phase of mind which shall be as different from all present known phases, as the mind of animals is from that of vegetables? Now if a human being had existed while the earth was We get from amoeba to fish, or from tea kettle to steam engine, incrementally. TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. If so, what will they not in the end become? Would he not have denied that it contained any potentiality of consciousness? Is not everything interwoven with everything? “But who can say that the vapour engine has not a kind of consciousness? “The very nature of the motive power which works the advancement of the machines precludes the possibility of man’s life being rendered miserable as well as enslaved. “This is true up to a certain point; the driver can stop the engine at any moment that he pleases, but he can only please to do so at certain points which have been fixed for him by others, or in the case of unexpected obstructions which force him to please to do so. ", He got that right. See our. The more highly organized million years: see what strides machines have made in the last thousand! {{item.description}}. and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. ", This is another point Nagel precisely shares. If we say that it acts mechanically, and mechanically only, shall we not be forced to admit that sundry other and apparently very deliberate actions are also mechanical? “The bearing of all this upon the machines is not immediately apparent, but will become so presently. He perfectly well knows what will happen, and will stake his whole fortune thereon. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. It us my intention, on a future occasion, to bring together examples both of the expressions in common use among mechanicians, and of any extraordinary exhibitions of mechanical sagacity and eccentricity that I can meet with — not as believing in the Erewhonian Professor’s theory, but from the interest of the subject. ‘It would be absurd to attempt to define such a mental state (or whatever it may be called), inasmuch as Some of the lowest vertebrata attained a much greater bulk than has descended to their more highly organized living representatives, and in like manner a diminution in the size of machines has often attended their development and progress. He becomes more and more complex as he grows older; he will then be seen with see-engines, or perhaps with artificial teeth and hair: if he be a really well-developed specimen of his race, he will be furnished with a large box upon wheels, two horses, and a coachman. He sees the light coming from the cellar window and sends his shoots crawling straight thereto: they will crawl along the floor and up the wall and out at the cellar window; if there be a little earth anywhere on the journey he will find it and use it for his own ends. and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The largest of them will probably greatly diminish in size. That old philosophic enemy, matter, the inherently and essentially evil, still hangs about the neck of the poor and strangles him: but to the rich, matter is immaterial; the elaborate organisation of his extra-corporeal system has freed his soul. The more highly organised machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time.

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