The question what makes us human is a traditional key question of philosophy. It is prominent in Kant’s work but also in modern systematic philosophy, there are several proposals to highlight the specific features or abilities of human beings. In the first part, we will discuss those candidates of specific human abilities which are investigated in the context of comparing humans and animals in the last 30 years. Most important candidates are linguistic competence, rationality or inferential abilities, tool use and tool construction, social competences, morality or social cooperation. A detailed discussion questions all these candidates. In a second part, we will discuss whether there remains a clear difference between humans and AI systems concerning typical human abilities: The explosion of AI competences also questions this perspective since it seems that for each human cognitive ability, we can train an AI system that also operationalizes this ability. But this leaves us with the open question whether AI systems really have the relevant features and abilities or only simulate them: are AI systems real agents? Can they really have feelings, emotions and consciousness? Are they just intelligent tools or do they develop into life partners? What does this mean for our self-understanding as human beings?
- Kursleiter/in: Albert Newen
- Kursleiter/in: Sanja Sreckovic