A machine is humanmade. Probably made in China too.. The point is, it is naturally for humans to see them selfes in their work. A human is an advanced molecular lifeform. A machine is a replica of that, because that is just what we know. The seperation probably lies in that if i had metal around my balls, i couldn't even build a machine cause of the pain..
First, I just want to say how surprised I am by all the responses. Second, again I'm sorry about the thread title, but it's kind of interesting to see who doesn't actually read the first post in a thread. I am focusing my responses only on those who responded to my actual post instead of the topic title. While interesting, it's a different subject. Hahaha my bad, I was on my itouch, lying in bed stoned. As a result, I didn't want to proofread it. But I agree wholeheartedly! Yes; this is exactly what I mean. I couldn't come up with the word at the time, but this is what I was getting at. As to the rest of your post, like I said before, it's a different subject. But the amount of replies is almost incentive enough to start a new thread based on this one's title. The fact that we still know how to do something years after we learn it is because of the fact that we repeat it until we know it. But given enough time without practice, just like any other animal, we forget how to do it. It doesn't stay with us until the moment of death. Consider studying for an upcoming test for a required class you're taking at college. For the test, you may remember 90% of the material. But the class has nothing to do with what you're interested in doing in life. You have no need to remember that information, and over a long enough timeline, you won't remember anything that isn't reinforced by something in your life that causes you to remember a particular part of that information. What about dreaming? Animals dream (look at my response to H2O420), certainly about experiences in their own lives, but is it a response to an external stimulus? The memory is created within the brain while, to an extent, shut off from the physical world. Animals have complex dreams, MIT researcher proves How would you define that? Hope the responses continue to come! Also if you responded to my post and I didn't reply, please say so, because I assumed it was either debating someone else's post, or else directed at the thread title.
My response shouldn't be taken as fact, more opinion based on my study of the human and animal brain. They dream, but who's to say it's similar to human dreams? yaaaadada?
We're made up of a dense body, vital body, a desire body and a thought body. Machines are purely a dense body as they're made from mineral life basically. Plants have a dense/vital body, and animals dense/vital/desire body. It's not quite that black and white, but yeah, that's it pretty much lol edit: yes animals have thought, but like I said, it's not that black and white, and the thought body is made up of 7 sub-divisions.
humans fall inside our definition of machine. just because we haven't created self aware machines with emotions and abstract thoughts and shit doesn't mean they're unable to exist. hell, i don't even know if i would say we are self aware. self awareness is really a paradox if you think about it. just because we can say we exist doesn't mean we're self aware. computers can say that too. regardless of the meanings we give these words, they're just words with no objective meaning attached.
Well if you mean unique from other species, you've hit the nail right on the head. We have a social connectedness, an empathetic resonance that builds relationships, groups, and societies from the ground up. No other species had quite this instinct and so was not successful at such widespread migration. This was not our only unique quality however...we also have evolved cognitive faculties, coping means, and so forth which allowed us to survive during cave man times. These qualities are HIGHLY unique. No other species or computer (yet) has this ability...maybe some aliens out there can outsmart us. Now if you mean from machines, in principle nothing differentiates us from machines. Here is a proof I ran across not too long ago stating that: since we can replace a neuron one at a time with "silicon computer chips" and still maintain the same conscious human...human consciousness is equivilant to computer consciousness. Now, good question to ask is why no computers are yet conscious. Reason is they lack two things: 1) awareness of enviornment, & 2) awareness of the self. Humans are aware of things around us...we have bodily-centered spatial-perspectivity & we have a sense that we own our bodies & minds. We not only aware of the things around us, but we also have the highly evolved ability to be aware of ourselves...so that we are not just acting on instinct, but we are self-aware. There are literally entire anthologies written on this topic.