What makes us human?

[Blt3200]

Not a difficult question at all. A human is any distinct, living organism with a full set of human DNA (zygotes, yes - skin cells, no). Not to be confused with the term "person," which obviously applies to all living humans and nonhumans with a humanlike intelligence or the inevitability of developing humanlike intelligence if left alone (like a zygote).

Edit: a human brain in a robot body is a robot being controlled by a human. The robot body itself is not part of the human.

Exactly! Lets say you switch a dogs brain with a humans, and get it to work, it's still not a human. The dog brain is just piloting a human shell, as our brain does with our body.

Even if you teach a dog to act like a cat, it's still a dog because its still a dog brain, its just learned to exhibit a different behavior.

Long story short, your brain is you and your flesh and bones are just the means to get around and execute the commands of the brain.

 

[FPLOON]

What makes us human?

Well, first you have to ask yourself if you are human... It's a trick question because it's never a straight-up "yes or no" question both subjectively and objectively, but mainly subjectively because "Science, *****!" *ahem* First, you have to question the species in which you feel like you are apart of by separati-I mean "categorizing" them into various groups of infinite possibility... Then, you must bleed metaphorically and not physically, unless you're giving [blue] blood or something that humans do with blood, I guess... Then, continue to question life itself, like why are we fighting or fucking or fight-fucking... Then, you show off your metaphorical duck-face emotions of various degrees, which is tricky because that shit comes more natural than your nipple milk sometimes... Then, you do something that's not either instinctual and/or as a means to survive, which should come easy if you've been following along so far... Finally, you die a mortal's death with many unanswered questions left unanswered, especially if you haven't adopted a pseudo-mantra to death because you decided that you only run on facts and nothing else... That last part's more subjective than one's masturbation habits, since by now, you should have realized that the world never revolved around you to the point that it, itself, metaphorically never really cared if you were alive or not to question its existence even more as time progresses and shit...

In other words, you are a human if you are a fleshy, organic, [almost] sentient robot made from the genetic makeup of other humans that were made the same way beforehand... Also, the moment you create a mechanical robot of your own is the moment you're willing to give up a part of your metaphorical humanity in order to bring something that's objectively artificial to life in the same way you are...

 

[WarpZone]

I guess as a quick and easy question to get the thread started is "would you perceive a robot with the brain (and consciousness) of a human to be human, or a robot?"

Depends on how the robot was designed. If it was this huge or tiny chrome thing with wheels and non-humanoid limbs sticking out at weird angles, I'd probably go "woah look at that robot" as soon as I saw it.

If it was some kinda fancy realdoll chassis from japan, I'd go "AAAAHHHH! ZOMBIE! KILL IT! KILL IT!" If we assume that one day artists are capable of overcoming the Uncanny Valley Effect, I'd probably perceive it as human.

If somebody told me both of these creatures were robots with human brains, I would probably think of them as cyborgs. (That is to say, as humans with functional manmade augmentations.) I would still perceive them as a weird metal machine and a creepy not-quite-right-looking humanoid, respectively.

Because that's what perception is, right? It's my eyes and ears telling me what I'm looking at before I stop and think about it. It's not the same thing as my internal model.

Over time, working with the both of them in the same office, I'd probably start to think of them as individuals more than as representations of their respective phenotypes. Obviously if they self-identify as human I'm not gonna argue with them.

Of course, if a robot drove up to me at random and said "I have a human brain," whether or not I believed it would depend on what the latest technology said was possible. If it happened today, I'd say "I believe you," because clearly it's some guy with a remote control nearby talking through a radio, right?" If it happened after human brains in robot bodies were a thing on the news, I suppose I'd believe them. If there were also computer programs that could pass the Truing Test, maybe I'd need to see some medical paperwork before I knew what to believe, but I like to think I would err on the side of not offending or otherwise hurting a fellow human.

Of course, this entire philosophical question becomes moot when they come to work wearing tails.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Why does it have to be a brain in a jar? Are you implying that my consciousness is the 'human' part? The body affects the mind in many ways to me its all part of the human. If I cut my liver out and put it in a machine to keep it alive is that a liver or a human?

 

[Hoplon]

It's philosophy time, bitches.

I've been thinking about this question lately, about what makes a human "human", and how far we would have to go to make a human no longer be perceived as one.

If we cut of the arms and legs of a person, everybody would still agree it's a human.
If we cut off the torso and kept the head alive, it would still be a human, yes?
What if we extracted the brain and put it in a jar, able to communicate over some sort of brain-computer interface? Would we still think that's a human, and if not, why? Does a brain need a head to be human? That would imply our head, and not the brain, is the core of our humanity, which is a bit silly.

I guess as a quick and easy question to get the thread started is "would you perceive a robot with the brain (and consciousness) of a human to be human, or a robot?"

Neither fish nor foul nor good red herring.

a human is a member of the species of apes called Homosapien.

A person is pretty much the contents of their skull, since if you damage it just right a whole new person appears. That personality doesn't even need to be stored on a biological brain to still be that person.