What makes us human?

 

AI-generated image using the prompt "The Earth Consumed by Fire"

During my first Intro to Humanities class of the semester, I like to ask students to list five capabilities and five limitations of human beings. We do this exercise in small groups and it always yields some wonderfully creative responses like, "Humans can't see as many colours as mantis shrimp"(I checked this out--not true, though mantis shrimp have more photoreceptors) or "Humans really can sweat more than most animals". This conversation leads into the idea that the Humanities as a aset of academic disciplines explore the range of human capabilities and limitations. I harvest and group the student responses into clusters around key human qualities like creativity, emotion and language. One student boldly declared yesterday that humans have all capabilities and zero limitations. 

For the last three semesters, you know what core human quality has NEVER shown up from these student groups? Rationality, thought, critical thinking, or reason. None of these words. I wouldn't say that these students don't value reason, but it's striking that it doesn't come to mind in a conversation like this.

It just so happens that I am also in the middle of teaching Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for a different class, which I hadn't looked at in decades. He envisioned a society utterly hooked on passive entertainment, in which having a thoughtful discussion was a strange way to spend an evening. He imagined a society who burn books because thinking is uncomfortable, and might make us unhappy. What he did not imagine is that nobody needs to burn books if we don't value thought and the pursuit of understanding in the first place.

We are definitely not in the Enlightenment era any longer and maybe that's okay! Cold rationality with no space for emotion is as un-whole as excessive emotionality with no space for reason. I want the whole, integrated human being. 

I know the AI conversation is happening all over in education. What terrifies me most is the prospect of surrendering, not just the power of thought, but the right to think to machines. The experience of cognitive dissonance and the free exercise of critical thought are one of the greatest human privileges--alongside creativity, emotion, and language, of course!