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What is it to be a Human?


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Just now, Rolig Loon said:

Regardless of what intent anyone has in starting a thread, I prefer to approach a philosophical question as if it were a genuine attempt at discussion. It's sadly true that many discussions here are derailed quickly, sometimes by cynics and sometimes simply by people who want to drop in a humorous aside. As far as I am concerned, though, big questions about who were are, what our place in the universe may be, and how we decide to make moral decisions are important enough to be fair game here. They are part of our personal search for meaning. We don't leave those questions behind as we step from Real Life to Second Life.  If anything, SL gives us a different vantage point and therefore a fresh reason for asking them. 

That'd be all well and good if a poster has a track record of fostering/being open to actual discussion as opposed to pontification.

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23 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I'll bite - while chuckling a tad.

That is entirely subjective though the barest definition - shared by much of the "community" and Fandom at large - entails having an appreciation for Anthromorphic character art. Beyond that and things can get ... testy.

Yes, the legends do tell us of such things.

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Just now, Rowan Amore said:

Normally, I'd agree but not in this case.

I won't argue for or against that point. I'd only say that if you don't feel that it's worth your time to treat a philosophical question as genuine, you should probably leave the question alone and pay attention to other threads. I do that all the time.  :) 

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I see humans and animals basically (broad-brush here as I cannot go one by one by one) as simply part of a family with certain needs.  Animals are the same as humans, part of a family with certain needs.  

Edited by FairreLilette
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9 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

The only reason to discuss what it is to be human means there is possibly something not human that can pass as human. Like furries for example. 

Now on a hypothetical: Would one be looking to hold a Philosophical/Spiritual discussion on what it means to be Human after Homo Sapiens begin to colonize other worlds and come across another species or should one adjust the language for better understanding of what is being discussed?

Bringing that back to the present 'topic': The nomenclature being used simply does not fit. The Philosophical/Spiritual discussion does not concern what it is to be "a Human" - at all. Sentient, sapient, reasoning (among other descriptors) - certainly. Not "Human".

Edited by Solar Legion
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3 hours ago, Chroma Starlight said:

which is that there is a universality to all life. I have not even asserted what my beliefs may be

I simply believe what is ingrained in us through nature is to survive.  Nature has us by the throat with our sex drive so we procreate to create the younger and the stronger who in turn  continue to help nature survive by nurturing nature.  And how does nature get us to nurture it?  Nature has given us the need to eat, thus we must nurture nature to survive.  At our base is survival.  Next level, we feel comforted, even little animals too, when they are feed and kept warm.  So to me it's survival and comfort and then a bond of family as our universality.    

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1 hour ago, FairreLilette said:

Nature has us by the throat with our sex drive so we procreate to create the younger and the stronger who in turn  continue to help nature survive by nurturing nature.  

Nothing in human nature compels us to have more children than we or the world can bear nor to otherwise live beyond our means as fitting. We know this because we look at all the other life, close or far away from us, and we see it always seeking balance with its environment. No, the thing that compels some to defy human nature must be some form of "nurture" quite apart from nature.

Edited by Chroma Starlight
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13 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Would one be looking to hold a Philosophical/Spiritual discussion on what it means to be Human after Homo Sapiens begin to colonize other worlds and come across another species or should one adjust the language for better understanding of what is being discussed?

That's an interesting question. By asking it, you seem to be suggesting that our definition of "human" is biased (or maybe "limited" is a better word) by the fact that homo sapiens has some capabilities that make us unique among living things, so we have a hard time stepping outside our own narrow perspective on "humanity".  You're separating the biological definition of "human" from some other practical considerations.  As you suggest, is there a point at which "humanity" does not necessarily depend on being one of our own species?  It's a very old question, maybe more relevant now than in past centuries. At what point, for example, does an AI-enhanced robot become "human"? Aside from the Turing test, how would we know?  When should we adjust our language?

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1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

That's an interesting question. By asking it, you seem to be suggesting that our definition of "human" is biased (or maybe "limited" is a better word) by the fact that homo sapiens has some capabilities that make us unique among living things, so we have a hard time stepping outside our own narrow perspective on "humanity".  You're separating the biological definition of "human" from some other practical considerations.  As you suggest, is there a point at which "humanity" does not necessarily depend on being one of our own species?  It's a very old question, maybe more relevant now than in past centuries. At what point, for example, does an AI-enhanced robot become "human"? Aside from the Turing test, how would we know?  When should we adjust our language?

You're partly on the "right" track there - "Human" as a descriptor pertains solely to the species. "Humanity" as a descriptor should only pertain to how much what is being described is "similar" to Humans.

An AI-enhanced construct of sufficient complexity ceases to be "artificial" in all but technicality (manufactured as opposed to organically created or similar) and is thus its own species. It cannot be termed as "Human". a cybernetically augmented or AI-enhanced member of Homo Sapiens can be classes as "Human" however.

It is pure hubris to use the terms "Human" and "Humanity" for anything beyond biology/species designation.

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40 minutes ago, Chroma Starlight said:

Nothing in human nature compels us to have more children than we or the world can bear nor to otherwise live beyond our means as fitting. 

That's only since birth control though and we intervened with nature to cause a change which was we created birth control and you never said this was human post birth control.  Pre birth control, I don't see it that way, nor does my ex boyfriend's Aunt who had 19 children.  His Aunt also has over 100 grandchildren and I don't know how many great-grandchildren but quite a lot.  My parents were both from large families as well.  My Mom being the youngest of 11 sibblings, my Dad nearly the youngest of 9 children.  Nature is quite crafty.  Nature has us by the throat with our sex drive and our need to eat.  We have to nurture nature for our survival.  This is our base.  In the present time, the rest is secondary and us evolving post birth control.

Edited by FairreLilette
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2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

It is pure hubris to use the terms "Human" and "Humanity" for anything beyond biology/species designation.

I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but you have made a good point.  We don't have to go far back in history -- or at all -- to find situations in which classes of people were considered to be "subhuman".  It is certainly hubris to declare that narrow considerations of skin color, ethnic heritage, religious belief, wealth (continue the list ...) should determine whether some people are "more human" than others, or even human at all. So perhaps extending the term "human" to include AI-enhanced robots or extraterrestrial beings is also demeaning in the same way -- saying, in essence, "You are now enough like us to be considered human".  The words "human" and "humanity" are inadequate and inappropriate for describing other sentient species.

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56 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Pre birth control,

Birth control is actually surprisingly old ("modern" methods only date back 100 years, but still. . .), although its effectiveness has varied depending on time and place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control

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1 hour ago, Solar Legion said:

"Human" as a descriptor pertains solely to the species. "Humanity" as a descriptor should only pertain to how much what is being described is "similar" to Humans.

It is pure hubris to use the terms "Human" and "Humanity" for anything beyond biology/species designation.

I humbly disagree with your first point. I believe that "Human" as a descriptor pertains primarily to the character of a system, a system defined in terms of its alignment and synchronization with higher, more universal, things, something nature appears to intuit quite well when left to its own form of order. 

Edited by Chroma Starlight
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21 minutes ago, Quistessa said:

Birth control is actually surprisingly old ("modern" methods only date back 100 years, but still. . .), although its effectiveness has varied depending on time and place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control

Yes but we made those up and we intervene with nature.  That is not nature's base that it put inside of us with a drive we cannot deny and to eat.  Nature wants us to survive and to nurture it and it found ways to ensure that.  Doesn't mean we are not capable of outsmarting it or killing it altogether and many things in between.  I am speaking about the base; it is a cycle of life here.  

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9 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

we intervene with nature.

How do you define "nature" exactly? What makes one type of thing that humans do (Birth control, building concrete cities, animal domestication, wearing clothes etc etc) "Unnatural" or "Intervening with nature" and another set (hard to think of any "natural" sounding things people actually still do in modern times to be honest) "Natural" or "Nurturing nature"?

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38 minutes ago, Quistessa said:

How do you define "nature" exactly? What makes one type of thing that humans do (Birth control, building concrete cities, animal domestication, wearing clothes etc etc) "Unnatural" or "Intervening with nature" and another set (hard to think of any "natural" sounding things people actually still do in modern times to be honest) "Natural" or "Nurturing nature"?

By nature I'm simply speaking of the way it started.  At the core of our being is survival and that is the same with the Earth, survival.  The Earth wants to survive.  It gave us a sex drive and we have to eat, in these two things, the Earth hopes to survive.  We are also born with senses to see all that is upon the natural Earth.  It seems to me at our base we were born to enjoy what we eat with taste buds, enjoy what we smell, enjoy what we see with the colorful earth, enjoy the sounds of the Earth, etc.  All the rest of what man and women are we made up ourselves as we evolved.  It seems to me that we were born to enjoy life and the Earth through our senses and be it's caretakers.  All this work stuff is made up beyond what we need to survive.

Edited by FairreLilette
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