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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: words or other signs arranged in such a manner as is competent to us in
order to declare our thoughts to others: for we may easily conceive a
machine to be so constructed that it emits vocables, and even that it
emits some correspondent to the action upon it of external objects which
cause a change in its organs; for example, if touched in a particular
place it may demand what we wish to say to it; if in another it may cry
out that it is hurt, and such like; but not that it should arrange them
variously so as appositely to reply to what is said in its presence, as
men of the lowest grade of intellect can do. The second test is, that
although such machines might execute many things with equal or perhaps
greater perfection than any of us, they would, without doubt, fail in
Reason Discourse |
