• Question: What makes us human?

    Asked by anon-267545 on 10 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 10 Nov 2020:

      This is a very difficult question! You should join “I’m A Philosopher, Get Me Out Of Here” and ask them 🙂

      An important question is if you could make a perfect human mind out of a computer and put it in a robot, would that robot be human? A lot of emotions can be caused by our bodies, and our experiences in life shape our selves, so in many ways being human is linked to who we are and how we live in the world.

      Humans can do many things, good and bad. I like the creativity, the inventiveness, the kindness and the care humans have for each other and for the animals and environment around them. I believe in respecting what is best in humans and by making a society that runs to help all people live the best lives they can, not fighting each other for a slightly larger share of the world’s wealth.

    • Photo: Daisy Shearer

      Daisy Shearer answered on 11 Nov 2020:

      It sounds like you’re a budding philosopher, Mikkel! This is definitely something I’d ask a philosopher or a neuroscientist or even an anthropologist. As a physicist, I’m not sure I can really speak with any authority on the matter, to be honest. For me, one thing that makes us human is our ability to share and communicate knowledge through complex language.

    • Photo: Bradley Young

      Bradley Young answered on 11 Nov 2020:

      I don’t think I’m qualified to answer this philosophically or biologically but I’ll have a go with the biology. Humans are a species called ‘Homo sapiens’ and the biological definition of a species is a group of organisms that can breed.

      For example, humans can breed and have viable children, but a horse and a donkey cannot (their mule would be infertile).

      So I would say that to qualify as a ‘Homo sapien’ you need to have enough genes that are similar to the rest of the ‘Homo sapien’ population that you could breed with them.

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