What Does It Mean To Be Human

The age old question of what it means to be human can be answered through many viewpoints. There are several specific qualities that differentiate humans from any other creature, but with that being said, humans are often compared and contrasted with animals and machines. Some of these specific qualities are the use of language and freedom of will. But what does it really mean to be human and can our exploration of language and freedom of will tell us what makes us, us? I will explore this question and help to answer it by using the 2004 movie I, Robot. In the future presented in the film, humans have become exceedingly dependent on robots in their everyday lives. Robots have become more and more advanced, but each one is preprogrammed to always obey humans and to, under no circumstances,

The robots weren’t born, which means they never had memories or past experiences that shaped their brain and their consciousness and allowed them to communicate through language the way humans do. They were programmed, which in and of itself is very inhuman. Humans are able to speak language because we have the ability to develop and learn it. We aren’t programmed like a machine would be we have to use our brains to learn something a robot can’t do on its own. In the matter of free will I tend to lean more towards Kant’s views. I believe that we all have the ability to choose our path but that the opportunities in which we are able to choose for ourselves are heavily influenced by our backgrounds and our surroundings. In the stimulus, just because Sunny was able to decide for himself does not mean that he was human. He wasn’t born, he never had the experiences necessary for his choices to be qualified as human. Ultimately he would never speak or be able to decide or even feel as humans do because through our experiences we able to do all of these things which a robot could