The Actor and the Spectator

Download or read book The Actor and the Spectator written by Lewis White Beck and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a machine think? More pointedly, if I am a machine, can I think? Beck answers these questions by analyzing two clusters of metaphors -- one of which dramatizes human beings as spontaneous agents (actors), and the other sees them as observers attempting to explain causally their own behavior and that of the actor (spectators). Using a hypothetical scene with two spectators, each explaining an action, and each representing a different way of viewing the world, Beck points up the central philosophical problems raised by the varieties of ways in which we explain our own actions and those of others.