Question: What makes us human ?

Michel Dugon answered on 13 Nov 2014:

You just raised a very interesting yet very complex question. Many scientists, philosophers and thinkers in the past 3000 years have wondered about it, and I am not sure that anybody has found an answer everybody would agree upon! I am not sure that any scientist here would be give you a clear answer, but here are some tracks to explore. Rather than saying “what makes us Human?”, I’d rather think about it as “what makes us different from all other forms of life on Earth?”.

– Something that makes us quite different from other forms of life, is our ability to conceptualise ourselves within a society, within the world and within the universe.
– We transmit knowledge from generation to generation, resulting in the development of a culture within our closer and wider communities.
– Our consciousness is probably the most developed of any animal on the planet: we can project ourselves in the future (what will I do in 10 years time?), we attempt to read other peoples thoughts and we react accordingly to other people’s expectations.
– We are capable of reflecting about ourselves, our destiny and the world around us.

A french philosopher, Rene Descartes said (in Latin) in 1644: “Cogito Ergo Sum”. It means: “I think and therefore I exist”. Only a human being could think something like that!