What does it mean to be Human?

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I wasn't sure if I should post in Philosophy or Entertainment, because its gonna apply to both, but growing up with Aspergers, I've always been REALLY curious as to what makes you normal, more-so what doesn't being human mean. Obvious answers like Sentience and such are all fine and good, but shouldn't something this important need more than just a single word for an answer? So to get off the heavy stuff, I'm curious as to how other explore the question at hand, do you take courses in Philosophy or Psych? Any media that you focus on that is centered around the idea?

Contrary to popular belief, Aspies are human. We just have alternative ways of looking at things.

In most areas, we are animals, pure and simple, at the core of it all.

We humans have felt that purely instinctual actions/reactions do not benefit us, so we have, over the millennia, devised ways to allow logic/reason to supersede instinct. We also made use of certain faculties which were "given" us through evolutionary processes.

Instinct is a strong thing, though. We must, at times, use vigilance to at least mitigate the instinctual feelings, so we are able to survive in a civilized world. It's a constant battle, waged by every human.

To start, I don't really have an answer of my own but a collection of sources that I enjoy, or agree with. Probably my favorite thing to tackle the concept is Ghost in the Shell. The manga, the Films, the Show- excluding Arise because I have nasty opinions about how drastically different it is, but I digress! I cannot ever turn down watching Stand Alone Complex, because it tackles Humanity in such a heavy, but digestible way.

For those of you not familiar, basic premis of the show is centered around a Counter-Terrorism team called Section 9 in Japan. We've basically let technology advance to the point where Synthetic Limbs are common place, since now you can just have your brain scanned and get a Cyber Brain or even a fully prosthetic Body and always be connected to the internet and yada-yada its Cyberpunk Setting 101.

But then theirs that whole "Ship of Thesseus" thing; whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. So in the Series, the idea that you can replace pretty much your entire body, even your brain is commonplace now in society, but there's this idea that your Ghost makes you what you are. "Ghost" pretty much stand in for the idea of the soul. Hence Ghost in the Shell, that "Shell" being your body.

We have to make use of personal,real-life anecdote to define humanity, in a complementary relationship with philosophy and allegory.

Philosophy, fantasy, and other forms of transcendent idea-interpretation will not do it. Pure logic will not do it. We need input from experiential sources.

I think this is an interesting leading question, worthy of a multifaceted discussion.

Being sentient does not equate to being human; it is only the ability to "feel" via input from our senses. KortieKraftie touched upon this when he mentioned reason, which is actually the counterpart to sentience. Pop culture science fiction has misrepresented sentience as meaning self-awareness, but that's only because as sensory driven nervous system taxonomies grow in complexity, so does the degree of self awareness. At the very most basic level are worms and insects, driven largely by hardwired reactions - instincts, if you will. But up a layer, with a spine and brain, organisms begin to gain something very interesting: an internal representation of the body, encoded in a set of neurons that essentially mirror the outside projections of the body itself. With that and an abstraction layer we can represent the body and place stimulus in 3-d. We can also monitor changes in that stimulus by comparing it to the just prior state, and therefore predict what it will do next - a fourth dimension of time. We do something very similar in the visual cortex, mirroring the output of the eyes on a planar set of neurons, and it's likely something analogous happens with sound. So, with just those basics we have internal representations of the body and its environment. Other sites control & report on needs and instincts/reflexes that have already happened, and integrate our bilateral symmetry (or lack thereof, due to specialization of hemispheres). Somewhere in the topmost abstraction layer is where our "humanity" appears to exist; that ability to imagine, the ability to reason, and the ability to guess at the expected pleasure and pain of others and decide internally what we want our body to do before telling it to do so; full consciousness.

But what is "humanity"? So many wonderful authors and philosophers have explored the issue in amazing depth, mostly because they wanted to discern what separates us from not-us. Clearly, a simple aggregate of genetics, physiology and social structures is not enough; while they make us distinct, they do not make us *special*. Maybe we're not. Maybe "we" as a species really are just apes that have a more advanced capacity to reason and therefore predict what is most likely to happen next. Perhaps our humanity exists primarily in our imagination.

As a non human idk. But seems some things to define it is having s good paying job which makes you a contributor to society. As to why i dont know roads I guess.

I dont know what I am though.

I have no idea.Wouldnt want to be one.

Human is a species of ape that has adapted to live in an illusion.

The main question should be, what a magical place we live, let us learn of it.

Instead, worldwide, some illusion becomes the dominate reality for a group. From a few people on an island, Easter Island, to masses living in China, and all the village and tribal levels between, each is a total illusion, that all of the members cling to.

It shows in a uniformity of styles of hair, dress, or at least penis sheath. A common narrative of how it came about, and a common view of proper behavior.

That they are all illusions shows in any well dressed and respected person for any group, looks out of place and alien in any other. That is only the beginning, as their language, world view, sense of proper manners, is just as alien.

All groups have a name they call themselves that means, humans, real humans, original humans, which excludes all others.

I joined WP because Aspies were defined as non humans. Not defective humans, but having a difference of thought and perception. As such, they are all a tribe of one. All the others are defined as being human because they belong to some group.

Aspie is the singular of human. Aspie Culture is any one person.

While there are problems in the transitional phase, apes developing Monocultures are the next step, an illusion of one.

This reduces the other guy, the Universe, to the only other thing.

Then it is not something other than human, we are both part of the same thing.

Again there are records, all of the great discoveries of Science. None come from the Midsummer Dance of the Human Tribe, they all came from one person working alone, someone who was not invited to parties, could not dance, and who in general the human tribe was ashamed of.

The Universe accepts Aspie Culture. Humans are like moths around a street light, very busy, but meaningless.

In the words of one Marty McFly: "Woah man, this is heavy!"