Ashford 1

Aaron Ashford
Suzanne Thomas
UWRT 1103 035
6 October 2015
Reflection 1: I adopted the same writing style I had for the literary narrative which I have
no clue as to if that is good or bad. I know this assignment was supposed to be more in a
professional tone but I feel as though taking on that tone would take away from a topic that is as
philosophically questioning as mine. You cannot market philosophy which I understand is
technically against the assignment but these means of writing seemed most fitting for me as the
writer probably out of a sense of comfortability or rebellion, sorry. Another concern I have is the
repetition of using a science fiction as the model which by itself makes it hard to sell a question
but is still okay in the aspect of trying to get the audience to think. A final concern would be how
weak my ending is and I really dont know how to end it properly but I will think of something.
Human?!
Oxford dictionarys definition for the word human is pretty vague. A human being,
especially a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien. makes a lot
of sense but there are some very small yet very persistent holes that shed light through the fabric
of the definition. This assignment's goal is to declare a question and explain why it is a question
worth chasing, but I intend to do something other than just explain it to you. Instead, I will tap
into your curiosity by casting questions into the air and aiming the light through the fabric unto
other fascinating questions and subjects that will encourage the mind to crank it's metaphysical
and rhetorical gears. In other words, were going be thinking hard.

Ashford 2
The question in question would be this: What makes a human? This question was
forged in the midst of my own experiences of certain readings I have observed in the past and
have brainstormed about often. There are several approaches to this question such as a more
structural and physiological/anatomical view. Obviously a human is an organism with skin, two
arms and legs, two eyes, a bipedal walker and is capable of human emotion. But then there are
outliers, people who dont have all their parts and lack these human emotions but we still
consider them human, do we not? So, if fitting a physical body profile and mental profile is not
how we identify a human, what is our means of identifying a fellow human being? In order to
answer that we must redress what truly is a human being.
Casting the light back onto our Oxford dictionary definition, A human being, especially
a person as distinguished from an animal or (in science fiction) an alien. As bizarre as it may
seem, we are going to have to delve into a model of science fiction in order to explain my point.
Another model exists and can teach in an even better way but alas the book The Ghost in the
Machine (By Arthur Koestler) is over thirty dollars online for a hardcover copy and even more
for a paperback version on Amazon for some reason and being the college student I am, I have
no money to spend on that. So were going to have to settle on a model that is more of a fan
made piece based on the book, an animated movie called The Ghost in the Shell, a science
fiction, cyberpunk themed animation written by Masamune Shirow in 1989. A quick but detailed
synopsis is in order for this animation for it maynot be as hard to grasp onto as Neon Genesis
Evangelion but it certainly falls under the same category. The story follows one character named
Major Motoko Kusanagi and her experience being the commanding officer of a group of
detectives of Public Security Section 9 in a futuristic but fictional city of Japan called New Port
City. The main aspect of how the future has affecting the setting Motoko is set in is that fact that

Ashford 3
in that world they live in, their culture accepts artificial body modifications such as robotic arms,
organs and even brains as the norm. So much in fact that people have stopped becoming people
at all and that the line between human and machine has blurred. This is how this model fits into
our question.
What makes a human human is that humans possess something a machine cannot,
consciousness. Our physical form can warp and distort and in the end we will still leave the
impression of human to our fellow humans but due to the presence of consciousness we are still
just human. This is a theme that Arthur Koestler brings about in his book several times and is
also a theme that Masamune Shirow throws up into the air for speculation when the character
Motoko goes into her long narratives about what it means to be human despite the fact that she
herself is almost entirely robotic in order to survive the high death chance her career offers. Just
as an added note before I disconnect fully from Ghost in the Shell as a model, I would
recommend watching it, it also confronts religion, meaning in life, death, evolution and humanity
in general making it an awesome thing to watch if you are into that sort of thing. Keep in mind it
also has nudity, blood, gore and violence.
What do you think? Is what makes a human human just the presence of a consciousness,
meaning in the terms of our model that a conscious robot is just as human as the rest of us? Or
are humans defined by other means such as culture or scientific categorization? As many scopes
there are to look at the question, I always tend to choose the most philosophically complex scope
to look through. So my thoughts on the matter may or may not be very different from your own.
Let the question sit in your head for a spell.