What is human?

[Zabuza825]

So, I was browsing YouTube and saw a video. That video was talking about how realistic Ghost in the Shell was. But, that video made me think of a different question. It's a very philosophical question, but a question that I have. I'm thinking of trying to incorporate this into a story, and while I have my own thoughts on this question I wanted to know what other people think the answer is.

What is human? What does it mean to be human?

Seriously, that's the question.

If I'm hit by radiation and my body mutates into some unrecognizable form, but my brain is still the same, am I human?

If I lost my left arm and replace it with a cybernetic one, am I still human? What about my leg, am I still human than? What about my whole body, if it's just my brain that's the same then am I still human?

What is a human? What does it mean to be human? Where is the line between human and not-human?

Just let me know what you think the answer is.

[Hadash]

From a biological point of view, a human is any individual of the homo sapiens species, born from two human beings -if one aims to go further- and it has, at least in potence, the ability to develop sexual organs and reproduce.

Therefore it is obvious that this not change in your first three examples. A human being with cybernetic limb would be still a human being, after all, and a human being affected by radiation and its body and organs mutating into an unrecognizable form would be certainly as a grotesque human being, but an human nonetheless.

Obviously, the last situation offers some complications. Scientists are still struggling to understand how human brain works, so it is difficult to imagine how would brain work transplanted into a different human body or some kind of science fiction android or cybor-like body (if not some "Frankenstein moment"). But as long we're talking about the same living human, and assuming that the brain would work through an identical process as in the human body, we could argue that this individual would be still an human being. It would be complicated to establish a clear line between "human or not human" in your example, but if the process of life has not been interrupted (the individual has not died), and it has retained his conscience and mind, it is difficult to deny the condition of being an human to any individual.

From a philosophical point of view, there is the distinction between human and person, usually understood the latter as an invididual able of rational thought and morality - at least in potence.

In the case of a zombie from a more typically scientifist horror movies, as a human being infected by some weird virus turning to a zombie, some could consider they are still an human but not a person anymore, as they lack rationality, morality and even will. It could be argued as well that an alien or some futuristic not-human android could be a person but not an human.

[Sal]

For the most part, ditto to Hadash's explanation. A species is roughly defined as the compatibility of gametes (sperm, eggs) and the ability to produce viable offspring. Going back a step, gamete production is controlled by genetic makeup (DNA, chromosomes) which codes for hormones that signal the gonads to produce gametes, so you can say a species is genetically defined. I say compatible gametes "roughly defines" a species because wolves and domestic dogs are arguably separate species but wolf-dog hybrids are a thing. I also say "roughly" because medical conditions or traumas causing interruptions to the normal physiology of a person's reproduction system (infertility), or any other animal's reproduction system, does not exclude them from being members of a species (although there again our definitions are dodgy considering we give a special name to mules, the product of a male donkey and a female horse, because they are innately infertile...).

The mutation question - "mutate" isn't really a term I like because, in nature, it's not as crazy as X-Men. Genetic disorders (cystic fibrosis, Down's, sickle-cell anemia, etc.) are all the result of genetic mutation, and we certainly consider a person with one of those to be human. But, in this case, I'm going to assume you're speaking of "bitten by a radioactive spider" or "fell into a vat of Chemical X", and in this case, I would say that your being human or not would vary on a case-by-case (mutation-by-mutation) basis as to whether or not you retained enough genetic sequences found in the human genome to still be considered part of our species. If your body became an amorphous, purple gel with sparkles inside of it, I kind of seriously doubt that your genes would be left intact enough to produce for you a human brain with all its former capabilities since it's rare that a single chromosome codes for a single part of your body (i.e. the part that turned you purple may have enlarged your prefrontal cortex; the part that gave you the sparkles deleted your medulla oblongata.) If, on the other hand, you just grew an extra toe, or had your hair color change, then yeah, sure, I don't think anyone would deny that you are still human. Essentially, if you can meet the rough definition for a "species", then yes, you are still part of that species.

In the case of a man with a prosthetic leg (or cybernetic limb if you want to approach it from a sci-fi vocabulary), he still has the genes which produce sperm which allow him to have viable offspring with a human woman. If he also lost his genitals in the accident that gave him the prosthetic leg, he at one time had sperm production abilities, and still has the genes producing hormones which signal the gonads to produce gametes - it's just that the hormones no longer have the appropriate receptors. Even if this man had never been able to reproduce with another human due to a medical condition like low sperm count or E.D., he is the offspring of humans, and innately biologically human.

A brain in a full-body prosthesis is still human based on the fact that the brain was at one point taken from a living human or was grown in a test tube from human-sourced materials with human genetics and was the product of two human gametes.The machine was never at any point human. We don't consider our cars to be extensions of our human bodies when we go for a long drive in a sense that we literally believe they become part of us (even despite how your buttcheeks mold to the bucket seats after a while, or how your thigh skin sticks to leather on a hot day), but rather vehicles. Disabled people in motorized wheelchairs don't consider the chairs to be literal extensions of their bodies and innately "themselves". I see a full-body prosthesis ("cyborg" scenario) in the same way; the human part (brain, foot, whatever) is the meat of a human, so it's a machine with human parts. Some people replace their car's gear shift with weird shit like a taxidermied deer hoof. While I wouldn't call the entire car a deer based on the hoof, I would still say the hoof contains deer genetics and came from an animal that belonged to the deer species, so it is a machine with deer parts. They're dead and not living like they may be in a cyborg, but it's the same regardless; define the meat, not the machine.

Now, certainly, there is a question of when to call it a "human with machine parts" versus a "machine with human parts". I suppose you can consider the importance of the brain in decision making, thought processing, emotions, desires, etc. The brain is probably needed to control the machine, so you may define that as "a human with a machine body". There is also the pure ratio, which I don't think is necessarily as important as type of human meats, but can be argued for. Is a being 20% human? 80%? What about half and half? I would say that this particular conundrum is related more to personhood than humanity considering the meaty parts are human meat regardless of what ratio or what type exist in/on the machine, which leads to the next topic...

Getting more to the side of androids (no human genetic material, but humanoid traits like emotions, personality, self-agency, thoughts, etc) rather than a cyborg or a human with prosthetic limbs, this is more a question of "what is a person" than "what is a human". "Person" and "personhood" have legal, moral, and philosophical implications. The easiest example of this is the debates surrounding abortion, of course; no one is denying that a human fetus is the result of human sperm and human egg cells, but rather the debate surrounds personhood.

Not covered in this discussion because nope, too sloppy, and I'm not a paleogeneticist: early homo genus "species" (Neanderthals, etc.) and whether a near 100% genetic similarity plus h. sapiens' ability to interbreed with them means they were all true "humans" and our modern binomial nomenclature system is whack, or whether your question was truly a lot harder to answer for our great^10 grandpops who had a thing for the apish lady next door.


TL;DR - Semantics. Human is a genetic/biological term and, although a little tricky when you get into the weeds, isn't impossible to define. Cyborg meat-machine ratio dilemma aside, you're thinking of personhood, which is definitely more difficult.

[Zabuza825]

Hadash, Sal, for the record I've asked a lot of people this same question and you two are the only ones to have ever made that distinction.