I would have thought the example was also chosen because of the well-known Chinese tradition of mass choreography where many hundreds or thousands of individuals perform a dance or exercise in unison which dates back to premodern times.
The philosopher in question was wrong to suppose that China was chosen because Ned Block, or the cultural surrounding Ned Block and weighing on his choices, thought Chinese people were unintelligent. However, I still don't think the choice is entirely innocent, as it seems to have its roots in a widespread stereotype about China that had already taken hold in Europe by the 17th century -- namely, that the Chinese are, as Leibniz put it, “wise automata”, able to execute the right actions without conscious knowledge of the right reasons for these actions, and thus, as a collectivity, already very similar to a well-functioning reckoning engine. Incidentally, you might know that Liu Cixin riffs on this idea in the novel version of The Three-Body Problem, where he imagines a working computer instantiated by an army of men.
I would have thought the example was also chosen because of the well-known Chinese tradition of mass choreography where many hundreds or thousands of individuals perform a dance or exercise in unison which dates back to premodern times.
The philosopher in question was wrong to suppose that China was chosen because Ned Block, or the cultural surrounding Ned Block and weighing on his choices, thought Chinese people were unintelligent. However, I still don't think the choice is entirely innocent, as it seems to have its roots in a widespread stereotype about China that had already taken hold in Europe by the 17th century -- namely, that the Chinese are, as Leibniz put it, “wise automata”, able to execute the right actions without conscious knowledge of the right reasons for these actions, and thus, as a collectivity, already very similar to a well-functioning reckoning engine. Incidentally, you might know that Liu Cixin riffs on this idea in the novel version of The Three-Body Problem, where he imagines a working computer instantiated by an army of men.