Are We Featherless Bipeds?
Philosophy has many angles. Everything on this blog so far has been concerned with how a person should act, exploring some schools of thought concerning the most “moral” way a person should approach a situation. But philosophy goes deeper than that; it does not also ask the question of how we should act, but rather, how do we figure out who we are? What defines a human?
The ancient Greeks debated this topic feverishly. Plato famously attempted to define a man, using references from his mentor Socrates. He settled on a scientific definition, naming man a “featherless biped,” two characteristics that distinguished humanity from other animals. In a humorous scene, Diogenes the Cynic, hearing Plato’s definition, plucked a chicken in his home and brought it to one of Plato’s lectures. When Plato asserted that man was a featherless biped, Diogenes stood, brandished the bald chicken and shouted, “Behold—a man!” Plato, perhaps missing the point of Diogenes’ criticism, then continued to amend his definition to “featherless biped with flat, broad nails.”
A New Perspective
Plato considered mankind to be biological: humanity has certain genetics that separate them from animals. With new waves in thinking over time came new ways of seeing ourselves: take the famous “I think, therefore I am,” brought to mind by Descartes, that argues any person who is able to think about their own thinking must be alive. Others, religiously affiliated, may believe that a person is composed of a soul, and that the body is just a housing place for the spirit. Others still may argue that any form of intelligent life constitutes a person. Still more may fight for a definition of humanity that includes the ability to feel emotion. These questions may seem easy at first. Of course a human has different genetics than an animal; of course a person is intelligent and emotive. But these questions become muddy when you consider the ramifications. For example: would a clone, bred in a lab, be a human being? Be a person? Genetically, yes. Identical to one, in fact. But to those religious few, whose definition of a person includes a soul, a clone would not be human. What about intelligent synthetic life—AI? To a person who uses Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” to argue the concept of the self, an AI would constitute consciousness. Artificial intelligence has the capability to think, and in the future, that capability is going to grow.
The Modern AI Problem
AI is perhaps the most relevant discussion our society will have to have when answering this question. In Plato’s time, the question “who are we,” while complex, did not have these additional nuances to try and work out. There are already examples of robots and AI being aware and thinking on the spot. Just a few years ago, that was not feasible. It is not out of the realm of reason to consider that in the future, AI may advance to the point of near perfection; emulation of emotion, a synthesized, near-human body—an intelligent life form, created by man’s own hand. Or, rather, not a life form, but perhaps a being either way. If technology ever reaches that point, then the already muddy question of what is a human will become much, much more difficult to answer. People today already empathize with animals who we perceive to have intelligence; dolphins, for example, or dogs, who learn tricks and sometimes seem to act with “human” emotions. Robot “life” would be more intelligent than ourselves; so for those who use the definition of “intelligence” to constitute consciousness, then AI, arguably, would be more human than humanity. It is an interesting concept to grapple with, and surely one that society may have to come to grips with eventually.
A Hypothetical To End On
If this hasn’t gotten you thinking about the nature of yourself and your thoughts, your consciousness, then I hope this scenario will. Imagine you die. Within minutes, a copy of your body—each scar, indent, blemish, and freckle the same—is created. Your memories are also exactly the same, except for one crucial thing: you do not remember dying, nor being “reborn.” Is this hypothetical you, the second you, the same as the first? What makes you, you? Your consciousness? Your physical body? Your memories, or ability to think? Or would this new you not be the same? The nature of self is confusing, and there is no right answer. I just hope you are able to think more clearly about who you are, what you are, and why you can think about it critically at all.
Your passion blog was a very interesting read; I have never really thought about the philosophical aspect of what makes us who we are/how we figure this out and what defines us being human. I like that you connected this to the modern artificial intelligence problem—something that is being studied much more and gaining a lot of attention in pop culture/media. Your topic was very interesting and did gain my interest; I like how you connected this to modern day ideas (including AI). Your paragraphs were good size, but I think there could have been more variance in how you split up your text/ideas. Since this is a blog rather than a formal article/paper, it is okay to have 1-2 sentence paragraphs, highlighting your shift in ideas/main-interesting points. I like your use of headings. Overall, great post!
Excellent article. I would say the clone is NOT you, but is every bit as much of a person as you, and up until that moment was an exact duplicate of you. It would be like an alternate universe version of you if the Many Worlds hypothesis is right: it’s you, but it’s not “YOU you.”
However, I believe that if you were to clone an identical version of you, put it unconscious, and then replace tiny pieces of your brain with the copy’s brain, one piece at a time—with long intervals between each instance so that the new pieces fully integrate with the whole—and it is done in such a way that you lose no memories, then at the end, you would still be you.
Your body already does this for other parts of the body to an extent. And memories fade and are replaced by new ones. As long as the consciousness stream remains intact during the process, I’d say you are still you.
But that’s another interesting thing to ponder.