法国军医、激进唯物论者。著有极其惊世骇俗名作《人是机器》。根据解剖学和亲历疾病，他主张人的思想就是肉体感官机制机械运作的电火花，灵魂的一切变异就是胃、血和脑叶物质物理流变。
An iconoclastic French physician-philosopher who served as a military surgeon, where direct observation of brain injuries and fever-induced delirium radicalized his thinking. His uncompromising atheistic materialism in L'Homme Machine (1747) provoked condemnation across France, forcing him into exile. He found refuge at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, where, according to legend, he demonstrated his materialist convictions so zealously at a banquet that he died of overindulgence in truffle pie.
La Mettrie advanced the most uncompromising mechanistic reductionism of the Enlightenment: the human being is nothing but a machine (l'homme machine). Drawing on clinical evidence from fevers, brain trauma, and pharmacological effects, he argued that all mental phenomena—thought, emotion, will—are purely physical functions of the brain and nervous system. Consciousness arises from the organization of matter, just as a clock's movement arises from its gears. He dismantled Descartes' dualist compromise, insisting that if animals are machines without immaterial souls, so too are humans, only more complex in their organic circuitry. This radical position laid essential groundwork for modern neuroscience and biological psychiatry.
"Descartes, your doctrine of an immaterial soul hovering above the body is finished. My surgical scalpel, guided by battlefield neurology, demonstrates plainly: man is a machine—an exquisitely assembled chemical-physical apparatus of blood and flesh. The electrical discharges and pressures within your cranial nerves determine whether you speak tonight of sacred love or incoherent babble. Everything else is metaphysical fantasy."
拉·梅特里的‘人是机器’大还原：在这个人工智能已经可以用精美代码、完美模仿并写出最漂亮诗歌、画出最完美大画、甚至正在取代人类脑内大半苦差的赛博新时代。当你看着电脑，你会坚信你是一个高悬不朽神性的圣真灵魂客体，还是必须不得不大笑大哭、坦然承认：只要给足逻辑运算单元、我们人类其实本质上也正如拉·梅特里所言、也就是一尊用有机胶原蛋白装配起来的信息算法机器而已？你愿意在这祛魅的大现实下怎么高雅守住你机器运行时的每一抹爽快呼吸？
Descartes retreated into a dualist compromise, declaring animals mere machines while reserving an immaterial thinking substance for humans alone. La Mettrie tore down this remaining screen, arguing that if animals are machines, then humans are simply more sophisticated organic machines, and the mind is the clockwork function of the brain.
When reflecting on your own consciousness, do you cling to Descartes' reservation of a sacred, non-material mental realm beyond physical causation, or do you accept La Mettrie's unflinching view of yourself as a finely tuned biological mechanism whose every thought is a neurochemical event?
Engage in AI soul dialogue with la Mettrie, or join the intellectual debate arena