That is in terms of surgery, medication, prosthesis, mutation, what have you.
I have my own ideas. I think you stop being a human when you no longer need other people for any reason. Everything else still seems human to me. Even without anything recognizably human, if it still wants interaction with people on a social level like we all do, it still counts as fully human to me.
Cats and dogs want interaction with humans and should be considered human. OTH, Tasha Maltby sets up a good example without any surgery by simply declaring that she is a pet. Remember, we don't allow dogs on the bus.
I feel you stop being human when you can kill and injure humans or use humans as food or tools as you have stepped down to the level of beasts. On the other hand, it seems perfectly natural to a wide variety of homo sapiens to injure/kill others of their species, even if the injury is not physical (i.e. economic, legal, etc.).
Emotions are as vital as breath. Without emotions, without feelings, without love, without hate, breath is just a clock ticking. Once one is unable to feel, one is unable to know why not to damage or destroy another creature. Once that is possible, nothing is sacred and no holds are barred. Emotions themselves being primal may not fully make one human, but they're a necessary safeguard against logic.
Logic, which is what we're supposed be champs at, is what says that one can go push someone and fake a fall to charge that person with a crime if they turn around. Emotions are what keeps their mark screaming for life in the torments of logical, inflexible law and motivate their mark to vow to destroy the next entity that pulls the same stunt for such entities are no longer human but calculating, cold-blooded machines aiming to inflict suffering. Sure, in the moment of raw, animalistic, self-protecting rage, one could argue that neither is human, but I would say that the one who is protecting themselves using any reasonable force against an almost mechanical prodding by a subhuman fleshbot bent on using an inflexible legal system is the most human. Emotion is what brings forth a primal scream to disable the fleshbot without a single blow.
Of course, I believe you could argue that because humans are beasts, you cannot become not human.
In all my years of interest in body modification and cyber culture, they still look mostly human or like humans wearing art. So, surgery and prosthesis are out. Prozium is in.
Cool.
So provided that an intelligence retains it's emotive faculties and empathic imperatives, it remains human.
And I'll believe dogs are human in their way, but cats don't need humans at all. They still happily hunt for food and sleep away from humans for any length of time. They don't even need each other as a social creature does. They I do not count as human.
QuoteOf course, I believe you could argue that because humans are beasts, you cannot become not human.
You could argue it, but there's an effective counterargument in saying that what makes a humane creature "human" is it's attraction to others like it. A human who's lost their taste for humanity is an intelligent beast.
Quote from: Felix on February 03, 2008, 01:34:18 AM
Cool.
So provided that an intelligence retains it's emotive faculties and empathic imperatives, it remains human.
And I'll believe dogs are human in their way, but cats don't need humans at all. They still happily hunt for food and sleep away from humans for any length of time. They don't even need each other as a social creature does. They I do not count as human.
QuoteOf course, I believe you could argue that because humans are beasts, you cannot become not human.
You could argue it, but there's an effective counterargument in saying that what makes a humane creature "human" is it's attraction to others like it. A human who's lost their taste for humanity is an intelligent beast.
So, what makes an ant an ant is that it likes being with other ants in a colony?
What if there's nothing more than intelligent beasts? What if no one is human to begin with?
Was the Unabomber and similarly many loners not human?
The unibomber was on someone's payroll. You can get used to anything when money's involved.
Ants are not human, however they possess a social trait uncorrupted by intellect.
And how can you proclaim humans aren't human? We are not our ideals, we are wildly flawed and fault-prone, out of necessity we have to be for without learning there is no development. We're designed to combine genetics and experience to make a being that is more effective than any beast.
As for loners, they all are broken characters who have not the mental/emotional capacity to take their place as contributing adults. In human society there are children, adults, and loners. That's just how we are.
Some could argue we, with all the chemicals put into our diets and environments, aren't really entirely human anymore, considering we've already modified ourselves to the point where we're not much like our early ancestors. IMO, the concept of "human" is pretty fluid, considering some can define it biologically, some socially, some emotionally, and etc. As far as I'm concerned, if you look and act close enough to the "human" archetype in my mind to make me recognize you as human, then you are. It's just a matter of perception.
I think that a human is a human, whether they like it or not.
...
But in all seriousness, the question of what separates humanity from everything else is extremely tricky. I really don't think we'll ever know.
Some say that the presence of a soul, or some defining characteristic/behavior does it.
Others say that we're just a glob of vibrating atoms, forming systems complex enough to get up one day and ask itself "What am I? Why am I just a glob of vibrating atoms?".
It's really quite disconcerting.
Isn't it?
Were it so easy to deduce the whole truth from what we know.
You have to take reality as a whole, or not at all if you're to get at the truth.
We seem to be phantoms of matter, from a physics POV. We seem to be a self-regulating system of neuroses from a Freudian psych POV. The list goes on, without any real correlation. We are what we are, and we won't get anywhere without acknowleging the fact of it.
You people. You go about your lives thinking you're all the pivot of some massive force of unknown elements. You all act like your decisions matter more than they do. Everything is a part of the same system of interactions. There's no way that everything can happen without it all acting in unison. And there's definite patterns to it, but nobody ever cares to look. There's talk of self-illumination, without ever acknowledging the whole system. The System is what ties it all together. You can't have any kind of reaction without other agents, and the entire neo-spiritual metaphysics movement ignores the 3rd person to the extent that everything it says is useless. There's an action to effect any change; We just haven't divined it. And since the scientific method is a perfect analogue to a brute force de-encryption hack, it'll take so long to figure anything out that we'll be extinct by the time we know anything of true significance at all.
I'm Felix, and I've had a whole bottle of wine.
What's the difference between a horse and a badger?
User friendliness.
ACTUAL TRUE FACT.
I'm currently a wino, ask me anything.
I am currently really tired, and will be going to bed, so I am missing my window of opportunity.
HAHAHAHA, glub glub
so, i was wondering, when is a house two houses and when is it one?
sometimes you have two houses sharing the same roof, but they are different houses right?
so does it depend on having a different front door?
but i also know houses that share a front door, and have a hallway/corridor inside (or stairs), but they don't even share the same roof sometimes, but i would also consider those to be two different houses.
so does it depend on the people living there? having a different address?
when is a house two houses and when is it one?
It depends on how they're being implemented. Is it under one title deed as well as one roof? Who lives in it? What is done there? Does it have many bedrooms? Is it a duplex? Apartment?
I would say the main ingredient in that metaphor is the difference between number of homes in any given house.
Usually I would define it as viablility of genetic recombination. If you can't crossbreed and create indefinately viable offspring then it wouldn't be defined as human. Which would mean something could be not totally human and still be under the classification of "human."
So my nuts make me human?
Quote from: Felix on February 04, 2008, 04:46:15 AM
So my nuts make me human?
//performs a KTC on Felix.
//suplexes Aini
//Performs bumrush
up right down left a b a b start!
ideal of automation,
mechanics to emptiness,
process the equipment,
sounds like im just human.
the restraint.
compensate.
equipment.
not good fleshy equipment.
erm yea
I'm of the opinion that most of these domesticated primates haven't even made it up to the status of "human".
You can't stop being something you never were.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
I feel that it is what you believe as well as the physical aspect.
If you think you are human. You are human. Because if you think, therefore you are. In the Descarte way.
For that instance. A person who may not be entirely "Human" or GATTACA could logically fulfill all these requirements.
However to biologists most of it revolves around Human definition as in "Homo Sapien" or genetic material floating around in a soup. Logically you could tweek a few cells in a chimp and have something that is "human" as well. Which is why I don't subscribe to that belief. Just because you can pump out more copies of our kind doesn't nessisarily mean you are actually a human in the psychological or spiritual sense.
This has troubled man kind since its beginning why do we consider some people mongrel races to be exterminated because they are sub human while other people are elevated to the rank of godking.
Loaded definition of the word human. Implicit assumption that humans = the only theoretically sentient and self-aware beings around. If talking in strict biological terms, defining homo sapiens sapiens is easy. Any other definition becomes tricky though, when it comes to, say, mental illness, genetic engineering, human rights law etc because of the basic assumptions. If a human is a biological construct, then genetically engineered beings are a new species (or subspecies), which makes their legal standard somewhat tricky. If we go with the latter sort of description, based around ability and function, then we may have to discard certain genetically defective or mentally ill people from the definition, as well as people in persistent vegetative states, as well as perhaps rethink our attitude towards some animals capable of higher functions (chimps, dolphins etc).
Peter Singer deals with the latter in some detail and while he is in some ways a PETA-esque nutter (and crypto-Yiffer, look at his views on zoophilia) he does raise some interesting points and questions.
I wasn't really seeking a philosophical or scientific answer, so much as to look at how lawmakers will try and treat it once it starts going places.
Quote from: Bharlion on February 05, 2008, 09:35:37 AM
If you think you are human. You are human. Because if you think, therefore you are. In the Descarte way.
What about what I cant 'think' about, but has affects?
I think (at least I think I do), but thats probaly not all.
Quote from: Bharlion on February 05, 2008, 09:35:37 AM
Because if you think, therefore you are.
If there is a clear cut 'instant' of time, that allows that.
The mechanisms that have to process information, in our bodies (brains, nerves etc) have to run finite asymettries. All instants get seemingly lost but gain attributes.
I have had the thought alot recently that time and instants are only products of our brains and bodies, but serve as auxilaries. Just like how we have language, but probaly dont need the novelty but it serves some purposes.
Quote from: Felix on February 05, 2008, 04:15:11 PM
I wasn't really seeking a philosophical or scientific answer, so much as to look at how lawmakers will try and treat it once it starts going places.
And that's
not a philosophical issue?
Quote from: Cain on February 05, 2008, 04:33:41 PM
Quote from: Felix on February 05, 2008, 04:15:11 PM
I wasn't really seeking a philosophical or scientific answer, so much as to look at how lawmakers will try and treat it once it starts going places.
And that's not a philosophical issue?
Depends on how you want to treat it. If you had a robotic arm that was noisy, people wouldn't want to hire you because they'd think it'd frighten customers. For example.
Comes under disability and employment law, and thus how those less well off in society are treated, especially if that causes an "inconvenience" for others, versus efficiency and the need of lack of distractions for certain jobs.
what if somebody *thinks* they're a chicken, they really believe it?
useless, crazy, insane, but still human, right?
It's silly to list the criteria that makes someone human. We all know what a human is. Its you and it's me and it's even that woman on the bus who thinks she's a dog. But there are tons of exceptions to every rule you can think of. Again, it would be silly / impossible to list all of them.
for example
(like cain said) if you list thought or self awarenessas a human trait, we filter out people in comas.
Is there going to be a point at which humans are no longer humans?
I'd say no, because becoming inhuman will be something humans can do.
For example, if we learn how to put brains inside, say, a Dell tower case and plug a monitor into it, we can't say that's not a human. Because humans can now do that too.
Paralell argument:
Hey Cramulus, if you're really a pirate, why don't you dress and talk like a pirate?
Listen dumbass, this is how pirates dress and talk. I'm a pirate so anything I do is what a pirate does.
Quote from: Felix on February 05, 2008, 04:40:03 PM
Depends on how you want to treat it. If you had a robotic arm that was noisy, people wouldn't want to hire you because they'd think it'd frighten customers. For example.
Probably not an issue. If integrated Type II cyborgs were commonplace, they might think your noisy arm was just ghetto as opposed to "frightening". It would be like wearing thrift store clothes, although not as cool. Also (at least in the US) it would be illegal to discriminate because they have laws about that kind of stuff. I think it's the "Americans with No Abilities Act" or somesuch.
(*cue "Trees" by
Rush*)
Actually I have a picture of a gentleman who believes himself to be a dog.
So I guess by my logic he thinking himself makes him a dog for all psychological intents and purposes. but not biologically or spiritually a dog.
Unless he was on mushrooms and trying to channel lassie.
[attachment deleted by admin]
Hahaha! I dub that man Saint Woof Woof! :lulz:
isn't that LMNO?
If it is, he has to change his name to Saint Woof Woof.
Nice choker. I dunno, sometimes humor has to be a little arbitrary to work.
I mean, it's a fairly accurate representation, but how the hell did he know?
Of course you realize this means Nigel is going to be hot for you. :wink:
He's a journalist, goddamnit. He does not reveal his sources.
Woof, woof.
[Some pun involving doggy-style]
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v711/Marburger/canyourpussythedogcontracon.jpg)
Correctamundo. I never reveal my sources. A little bird brought me that photo.
So LMNO, do you really wear a cone?
;)
i haven't seen the ethics point of view so here goes me
"The important feature of this account of what it takes to be a person, namely that a person is a creature capable of valuing its own existence, is that it also makes plausible an explanation of the nature of the wrong done to such a being when it is deprived of existence."
blatantly stolen from 'Wonderwoman and Superman The ethics of human biotechnology' this was about abortion originally but i thought it was also applicable here.
But a mad man exist
Adan the first man was human?
I don't think there is anything that can stop us from being human. No more than anything can changes us from being mammals to reptiles. It is all in the genetics.
Now as for how we think, what we think we are, should be or could be. How we feel and all that.
Isn't that really what is up for discussion, thoughts and emotions?
We can define a human a thousand ways and it will still be general and have exceptions.
As a political position, cybernetics will probably be extremely unlikely to change what we define as "human". We already have people with prosthetic limbs, hearts etc. We have people who can perform better than their human counterparts. One guy was recently told he couldn't participate in the normal Olympics because his prosthetic legs gave him an unfair advantage. They didn't consider him nonhuman though.
I doubt that mutation ala XMen will ever occur, so I don't think that's an issue, but existing birth defects don't seem to make people non-human.
Genetically, its pretty straightforward.
Philosophically/Morally/Ethically ... it all depends on the pattern you're trying to match.
Te contesto primero en español y luego en mi mal inglés para que entiendas mis conceptos. Respeto tu punto de viista en lo que se refiere a formar parte de la humanidad , interactuar significa ser generoso ,solidario, fraterno, pero la realidad y la sobrevivencia tambien nos obliga a ser depredadores de nuestra propia especie lo que no nos hace inhumanos.
Tenemos también los sentidos para llamarnos humanos, y la conciencia , y la inteligencia, la capacidad de elegir por reflexion y no por instinto, pero existen personas psicópatas, existen locos inofensivos, existen autistas, y personas que educan su voluntad para que sus emociones no interfieran con sus decisiones.
Yo pienso que visto de una manera más general se puede plantear ;somos humanos ,no objetos , porque tenemos vida ;entonces todo lo que es vivo es humano? no, pero estamos enlazados con otras formas de vida porque nos sustentan o porque conviven con nosotros en qué momento dejamos de ser humanos entonces ? sólo en el momento en que la vida se nos va y ya no necesitamos de la tierra y sus formas de vida no damos no nos dan, ya no somos nada , el resto son sólo grados de humanidad, mejor ser humano o peor ser humano, la naturaleza y nuestra unión con ella nos haría más humanos que nuestra unión con nuestros pares, no podemos prescindir de ella eso es lo que nos hace humanos desde que fuimos creados.
:)
godskolere dat neem je terug over mn moeder.
Atwhay?
hahaha 000 that will not be translated well by any translation software :P
i was wondering if it would be fun to teach the foreigners here(damn you allochtonen!) to curse like a dutchman.
example: krijg de vinkahkanker aan je linkertepel jij geestelijk gehandicapt cliniclown, stik in de pus die uit je onstoken cholera-anus druipt!
or something else including diseases, ill leave the translation of that to volunteers :P
acording to researchTM the dutch are the only ones to use diseases for cursing.
:lol:
diseases are the best to curse with, IMO. next up are body parts. diseased bodyparts.
i wouldn't even know where to start translating "vinkahkanker" :D cancer to the .. what?
and yes, i taught some of them the word "schurfthekel" (another disease + hate) yesterday.
vinkah: the Hagueish pronunciation of 'vinken'
as in finches, you know the birdies darwin supposedly studied.
it doesn't have to make sense, as long as it contains lots of hard sounds, the K is good(hence the popularity of kanker!)
i knew that, i just wondered what's so offensive about a bird :)
but you're right about the K, 9 out of 10 dutch comedians agree that words with a K in it are generally more funny than words without a K.
That's odd... My wife has the same theory.
if you put it really vague, like,
given two words, if one word has a K in it, and the other doesn't, on average, the word with a K in it is likely to sound more funny than the one without.
it might actually be true, and who knows there might actually be some sort of psycho bio linguistic explanation behind it
Humanity isn't in genetics.
If it was, than our space colonists could exterminate/enslave/exploit any intelligent life they found on the grounds that alien life doesn't use DNA. You're just setting us up to repeat everything that was wrong about colonialism!
One could make the argument that some especially intelligent animals (elephants, cetaceans, other great apes and some monkeys) are self-aware enough to warrant some human rights as well.
Conjecture: A human is an entity that has the capability to think about thinking (Meta).
Further explanantion available, but only upon request.
that's self-consciousness.
well, not entirely, but it's equivalent with self-consciousness.
no wait, i should say that different, it is my theory that in a similar way that there are certain classes in decidability and computability (in formal math) that are equivalence classes (like the travelling salesman problem and the satisfiability problem ... okay tangent.
either way, in a similar way, i pose that the ability to meta-think and self-consciousness are in the same equivalence class.
what this means is that an entity capable of meta-thinking, must also have self-consciousness, and vice versa.
and i for one, would think it very interesting to speculate what other (mental) abilities are in this same equivalence class. it kind of goes back to a tangent of thought i had with LHXs "origin of the lie" debates. back then i believed that the ability for an entity to produce a certain kind of lie (not mimicry, and a purposeful lie) is also in this equivalence class.
further, but this may be a stretch, i believe that the capability of communicating via language is also in this equivalence class, or perhaps just connected one way. possibly even with a restriction that the grammar must be at least of complexity type 2 (that is, possible to grammar-check with a stack/pushdown automaton, but not a finite-state automaton)
[sorry for wandering into the real of mental masturbation again :-P]
umm... By "language", do you mean the ability to construct a hypothetical situation?
Because lots of things communicate, yet we would not call them self-aware, or Meta-thinkers.
hm. good point.
by language i meant the sort of thing Steven Pinker talks about in his book "the Language Instinct" :)
he did define the difference between "language" (as he talks about in his book) and, for example, bird song, in his first chapters.
cause bird song is communication, but not what he defines as language.
i kinda forgot there it's not a very clear-cut term, i'll look it up now.
quoting from the first paragraph (just to give you an idea, i hope an actual definition will follow somewhere later)
Quote from: pinkeryou and i belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision. (....) that ability is language. simply by making noises with our mouths wwe can reliably cause precies new combinations of ideas to arise in eachother's minds
hm. leafing through the first chapter and a half, i'm probably skimming over it, but i can't find the definition, especially the bit where he defines "language" as something different than what birds use to communicate.
i fully admit that without a proper definition for "language", my statement is meaningless.
this definition is in my mind, but i wanna quote pinker's one, because it's written down so concisely. it's something to do with
- having a grammar/syntax (more accurately, a certain level of complexity in the syntax)
- being able to express a (theoretically) infinite number of ideas/concepts
actually, i think that's sort of it. especially the infinity bit. birds only know a finite number of songs and can only communicate a finite number of things. same with ants (pheromones) or plants (whatever it is they do again) or wolves or whatever.
while on the other hand, humans and certain species of monkeys (apes?) can communicate an infinity of concepts. dolphins are also self-conscious, but i'm not sure about their language-using abilities (hence my reservation that language might only be related to, not equivalent with, self-consciousness. language implies self-consciousness, but not necessarily the other way around--though i'm not entirely sure about that, but i can't prove it anyway).
It seems to me that you can philosophize all day about the meaning of a single word, such as "human". I'm a little too tired to get myself very deep here, but what one means or understands by a word is relative to one's own personal grouping of language constructs or ideas. What IS anything? What am I or you or god, and so on... Where do we draw the line? How "big" is the Sun? I doubt we can argue what anything "is". (it's so difficult not to start quoting and/or copying Wilson)
QuoteI have my own ideas. I think you stop being a human when you no longer need other people for any reason. Everything else still seems human to me. Even without anything recognizably human, if it still wants interaction with people on a social level like we all do, it still counts as fully human to me.
You can pick your criteria any which way here. There is no correct model. Every model is true in some sense, false in another-just kidding, I'll stop. Let us take Nietzsche's Will to Power as our system and label the human at the level of successfully evolving such complex/successful systems of power, just beneath the godhead (sorry Nietzsche). Perhaps the utilitarians are on to something; In which case, the dolphins should be far more "human" than we. I think it's a matter of preference, perhaps. I rather fancy the prospect of becoming MORE than human... expanding our definitions, and maybe evolving new ones (just as we do with our explanations in science). Also, one last comment on the above quote: Social dependence seems to me to be a drastic oversimplification of humanity, if one assumes losing it deprives one of one's humanity. Perhaps letting go of any social dependence could be a step UP the ladder.
Now, I ascertain that the original intended context of the question of what is human was related to political implications and such. Well, obviously this was stated, so I suppose this and the previous sentence were terribly verbose-However!Q! On
that subject, call it human or create a new concept. Use an old term like "cyborg" or simply divide "human" and "neo-human" and adopt a stance on which is higher on the evolutionary scale (or not).
As has been mentioned, we've drastically altered our current physical/psychological nature over a linear time scale from our habits, consumptions, drugs, environs, etc. As a matter of intelligence, it seems we are already far beyond the event horizon of cognitive shift as a species. We had extended our intelligence significantly in pre-modern time through psychoactive, occult, scientific and mystical endeavors, and have exponentially increased our rate doing so with modern day technology. We're on the verge of technological telepathy (the neckband thought-controlled phone for instance), telekinesis (emotiv's headset http://www.emotiv.com (http://www.emotiv.com)/ set for release this year, monkey and the robotic arm, various other impressive research going on across the globe), teleportation (see Quantum Teleportation, although there are completely different methods also afoot), AI (http://kurzweilai.net/ (http://kurzweilai.net/) ), and I believe we may soon seen the dawn of VIRTUAL REALITY, the implications of which I have not the time in this discourse (they are HUGE).
If an artificially intelligent being created through the results of the same evolutionary chain that caused an early hominid to pick up a stick or rock possesses the emotional complexity of a human (whatever that will be by that time), it will certainly surpass us in other ways (cognitive speeeed and unfathomable memory recall for starters). Whether we call it "human", "neo-human", "robot" or some other nonsense, it will certainly have it's own outlook on the matter.
If we wish to set some level of consciousness, we do not even know where a "human" stands next to a dolphin. Something I read recently, in comparing us with dolphins stated, "If you rip off our hands and throw us out into the ocean we won't look very intelligent." I think someone said that on a youtube video response. LoL Imagine encountering an alien race or suddenly being able to conversate with dolphins. What then might we consider strictly "human"?