What does it take to be human?
Occasionally a question comes out to my mind-Are we human just because of the unique traits and attributes not shared with animal or machine?
If I follow the definition of “human” , it is circular: we are human by virtue of the properties that make us human (i.e., distinct us from the animal and the machine). Clearly this is a definition by negation: that which separates us from animal and machine is our “human-ness”.
However, inevitably, we are human because we are not animal, nor machine.
Such thinking has been rendered progressively, less tenable by the advent of evolutionary and neo-evolutionary theories, which postulate a continuum in nature between animals and Man.
Our uniqueness is partly quantitative, partly qualitative.
(more…)