What does it mean to be human and

what makes a person a person?

Spring 2019
Discovering Anthropology
Today: Discuss on the following
questions in your group

1) What does it mean to be human?

(what makes human unique or different from
‘non-human’?)

2) What does it mean to be a ‘person’?

(what makes a person a person?)

Discuss for 15 minutes on each question. Try to find examples

that support your arguments or counter-arguments.
The human species: Homo sapiens
• Define the species:

• a culture-bearing, upright-walking species that

lives on the ground and very likely first evolved in
Africa about 200,000 years ago.
What does it mean to be ‘human’?

• Intelligence?
• Language?
• Self reflection?
• Problem solving?
• Emotion?
• Anything else?
How do we define Human?
• Emotion?
• http://www.wtvm.com/2019/02/22/watch-puppy-cries-over-
sad-lion-king-scene/
Human vs. AI
• Human intelligence
: ‘abstract’ thinking (e.g., mathematics, science, )

• Artificial intelligence can do this.

Who can survive in the future?
• We might survive by following AI’s ways of thinking.
• How?

• https://boingboing.net/2019/02/26/japans-robot-deity-
delivers.html
Frans de Waal
• Are we smart enough to understand animals?

• Do animals have morality, fairness, empathy?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg

From:
• https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have
_morals
How do we relate to Animals?
• Farm animals
• Pets
• Zoo animals
• Food
• Lab animals for experiments
• ….
Zoo
Why display?
Human zoos in the 19th ~ Early
20th C in Europe
Display of ‘Others’
• https://www.youtub
e.com/watch?v=-
46AymRRG_w

• https://muse.jhu.edu
/article/667736
What makes a person a person?
• https://fee.org/articles/what-makes-a-person-a-person/

• “Personhood is a moral concept, related to the notion of

individuality. Very roughly, a person is someone who matters
in his or her own right, and who therefore deserves our
highest moral consideration. But what makes someone
matter?”

• How could you define someone as a ‘person’ or not?

• Children?
• Mentally disabled?
personhood

“personhood” “treating him like a person”

Could one of these be treated as a person?

Ex) Slaves(노비), butchers (백정),...etc. in Chosun (15-early 20th

C);
orphans, refugees, LGBT, prisoners, AIDS patients,...etc. now
One more question:
a person’s death
• Why do we bury dead bodies, or at least have funeral?

• Ex) Antigone (Oedipus’s daughter)

She defies her father’s command and buries her brother’s dead
body because she thought it is a ‘courtesy to her brother as a
person’: “A person’s soul is more important than the state”

In ancient Greece belief system, one has to be buried when she

or he dies, in order to enter Hades’s underworld and rest.
Finally…
• Who gets to decide who is treated as a person? And why?

 We will continue on the issue of ‘person’ last week of this

semester.