Escaping the Mind Machine

In 1714, the German polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, wrote in The Monadology, “If we imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and have perceptions, we could conceive it enlarged, keeping the same proportions, so that we could enter into it, as one enters a mill. Assuming that, when inspecting its interior, we will find only parts that push one another, we will never find anything to explain a perception. And so, one should seek perception in the simple substance and not in the composite or in the machine.”