Wellness Calendar: Monday 10 November

What is it to be human?

The Duck Test goes something like this: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. If we apply this same form of reasoning to humans, we could, no doubt, come up with our own robust test. Yet before we get carried away with the simplicity of the operation, here are a number of ideas and concepts to suggest that what it is to be human isn’t all that straightforward.

Take the (Alan) Turing Test: what if a machine could display human-like intelligence and fool us into believing it is human? What if there was a conversation conducted through text with a number of humans and one machine all in separate locations? What if the machine was able to convince the humans with its responses that it was human too? What if some of the humans who were part of the test were none the wiser to this very day?

Another way to explore this theme is through the Chinese Room. Philosopher John Searle asked us to imagine a human in a room whose job is to receive squiggly lines and input them into a computer, which then decodes them and outputs more squiggly lines in reply. The human who is undertaking this role does not know that these squiggly lines are in fact Chinese characters. Yet while the human has seemingly less ability than the information-processing system of the computer, we know that they are human, with the opportunity to understand or not understand; whereas the computer will never understand, will never think or ever have perceptions, beliefs or mental states. And yet it appears to be able to correspond perfectly well in Chinese.

Next up is the philosophical zombie. It acts just like a human being in so many respects, yet it doesn’t have a consciousness. Is it still a human being, or is it a zombie? At what point would a human being stop being a human being and become something else? If someone were unresponsive to impulses, at what point would you say they’re in a vegetative state? And at what point would you say there’s not enough meaningful life left in someone to say they are alive? Just because you’re unable to communicate with them or perceive them to have any quality of life, how do you know, how would we ever know?

What do you make of these ideas?

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