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Acting humanely requires being able to distinguish what life is and a code of morals and ethics to guide how we live and why those ethics are in place.
Of course there are living beings in the universe and multiverse that are not human.
No, acting humanely requires being able to distinguish what consciousness is. How humanely do you act toward those fresh carrots you are preparing for dinner?
This line of thought (acknowledging the open questions about the lines between consciousness and non consciousness) is not what makes humans act inhumanely towards other human beings. But your line of thought could easily lead to humans acting inhumanely toward beings who are not genetically human.
Of course there are living beings that are not human.
And there are living beings that are not physical.
But technology is not a living being.
It sounds like you are not able to distinguish between what is living and what is not.
Acting humanely requires being able to distinguish what life is and a code of morals and ethics to guide how we live and why those ethics are in place.
Here we are in complete agreement. But I think the best way to determine what is or is not living or sentient depends mostly on reason and evidence based on the best of modern science and philosophy. Intuitions will have to play some role, but intuitions by themselves can go wildly wrong if not heavily informed by empirical evidence and logic.
At the moment yes but over the coming decades the distinction will become increasingly blurred. How much of a human being's body must be replaced by technology before he or she stops being human?
The distinction is not blurred. It only gets blurred when people are unhinged from reality or are disconnected from recognizing what it is to be human.
And it is a dangerous slippery slope in terms of ethics and morality.
Medical ethics is a field rhat addresses some of these concerns.
Boots on the ground practical reality check Gaylen. What's the difference between a human and a machine?
A machine is something created by an intelligence for a purpose. Human beings evolved via natural processes for no particular purpose. Human beings and other forms of conscious intelligence bring purposefulness into the world.
Humans are primates who have developed cortical areas capable of self-reflective consciousness and abstract/logical thought.
Along a more speculative metaphysical line of thought, I would say that animal sentience brings qualitative experience into the determinant world, and qualitative experience in the form of abstract recognition of alternative possibilities brings free will into the world. And Free Will brings morality. Free will also goes hand-in-hand with the possibility of questioning, which bring spirituality into the world.
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