When does a cyborg become a full blown robot?
Can you be a human and a robot at the same time?
A cyborg, put simply, is a biological organism with a mechanical enhancement of some kind. It is a broad spectrum ranging from having a hook for a hand to being nothing more than a brain hooked up to an entire prosthetic robot body. But at what point does a human have enough of their being stripped from them to not be considered human anymore?
I don't think it would be too difficult to argue that a human brain in a robot body trying to live out a normal life would be legally considered a human and even still be able to vote and get married... maybe. If allowing gay marriage is such a big deal it might be a stretch for a brain in a robot body. Maybe as long as it was a heterosexual brain. Anyway if someone that is perpetually comatose can be human than so should a full-chasied cyborg, so let's just assume that a still normal functioning human brain = human.
But what if we go further? What if the whole human brain is digitized perfectly and loaded onto a computer within the same robot body. Now every biological component of the human body has been removed. You are no longer a cyborg but are you still human? Is all there is to being human as superficial as still having a bit of flesh? Is it not human anymore by virtue of being a copy of the original or is it still human because there is no difference between the two beings except for the medium in which their brain is retained?
Ghost in the Shell is the best example I can think of that explores this area. The main character, Major Motoko, is referred to as a cyborg but in the conventional sense, she isn't. She has a full prosthetic body with a computer brain carrying the 'ghost' from her former biological body. Aside from the few extra perks that she has, she still looks and acts as human as anyone else. Now look at Robocop. This man was murdered and brought back to life as a cyborg officer. He should technically be just as human as the Major. Except his body actually looks robotic and his brain seems to function differently now with less emotion and fragmented memories. He is mentally less complete than he was as a fully biological human so he seems to be tipped more toward the machine end of the spectrum. Yet within the movie there is a sort of conflict between which is better in the line of duty, humans/human cyborgs or fully robotic mech units. It's the classic human versus robot debate where the human edges out the robot because he possesses something that just can't be emulated by a robot. Robocop, (Weller) is justified as a good 'human' compared to the evil mechs because he retains enough of his humanity.
If in the end a digitized human brain in a robot body is definitively not a human then what about a sophistocated AI uploaded into a blank human brain in a human body?
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