The Actor and the Spectator

Can a machine think? More so, if I am a machine, can I think? This book attempts to answer these questions by analyzing two clusters of metaphors: one of which dramatizes human beings as spontaneous agents (actors), and the other which sees human beings as observers attempting to causally explain their own behaviour 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, the book points up the central philosophical problems raised by the varieties of ways in which we explain our own actions and that of others. The text offers an argument for freedom in human action and sketches the way in which people, both actors and spectators, may behave morally and freely in the world.