The partially examined life philosophy podcast Part 1 episodes are designed to be self-contained,

fully satisfying experiences in themselves.

But for hardcore philosophy fans, we record for another hour or so to release behind

our various paywalls to folks that pitch in to help us make this show.

What you're about to hear is a preview of one of these Part 2 episodes, and hope you

enjoy it.

You're listening to the partially examined life episode 284.

We've been talking about Mark Twain's What Is Man?

Here in Part 2, we will get into the text.

Let's start.

So I did not try to outline the structure of the argument in detail.

But the first principle that he tries to establish is that human beings are just machines,

like any other machines, and they're what they're capable of doing, or what they do, I

should say.

It's a function.

It's a function of the constitution, the physical, basically what you're born with, and then

how what you're born with is impacted by external forces.

So the first thing he wants to do is establish that there's no concept of, as we were saying

in the first part, merit or blame, because we're just simply automatons.

That's step one, so to speak, of the first part of the argument.

Well, he uses this metaphor of stones and steel, right?

So that you could make an engine out of stone, it wouldn't be all that great, but to really

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