With robots being of far-ranging public and academic interest, attempts are made to set these into relation to earlier self-moving machines. Automata from European Enlightenment, especially in the 18th century, are such machines being referenced. The debate revolves around the question whether the design and the purpose of the construction of these automata can be viewed as antedating epistemological conceptualizations formulated with regards to the scientific employment of robotics as a synthetic modeling practice in contemporary life sciences. This paper reflects on a claim made in this context, namely that the construction of 18th century automata and 21st century robots share the epistemic role of simulating the core processes of living organisms and are thus indicative of an epistemological continuity in how organisms are conceived as machines. To philosophically investigate whether such a statement is taking changes in material, political, and technological conditions into account, a case study of Kempelen's Sprechmaschine from 1791 is done. The paper asserts that it should be historicized what makes a machine fit the concept of an automaton--and thus also poses the broader question what extent of caution must be taken in identifying automata with robots.

中文翻译：

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自动机和机器人中的模仿：肯佩伦的哲学案例研究。

随着机器人引起广泛的公众和学术兴趣，人们尝试将其与早期的自动移动机器联系起来。欧洲启蒙运动时期的自动机，尤其是 18 世纪的自动机，就是此类机器的参考。争论围绕着这样一个问题：这些自动机的设计和构建目的是否可以被视为早先的认识论概念化，这些概念化是针对机器人技术作为当代生命科学中的综合建模实践的科学应用而制定的。本文反思了在此背景下提出的一个主张，即 18 世纪自动机和 21 世纪机器人的构建共享模拟生物体核心过程的认识论角色，因此表明生物体如何被视为机器的认识论连续性。为了从哲学上探讨这种说法是否考虑了物质、政治和技术条件的变化，我们对 1791 年肯佩伦的 Sprechmaschine 进行了案例研究。该论文声称，应该对机器符合自动机概念的因素进行历史化——因此也提出了一个更广泛的问题，即在识别自动机和机器人时必须采取何种程度的谨慎态度。