What Is a Human? by Kenji Kamii, M.D., Ph.D.

While “What Am I?” begins as a first-person question about the self, this book begins with the broader question: “What Is a Human?” What is a human being? Is a human merely a body? A living organism? A mind or a consciousness? Or is the human being a more complex existence that includes memory, selfhood, relationships with others, values, responsibility, and mortality? This book examines the human being through the perspectives of medicine and philosophy, exploring the body, life, mind, consciousness, freedom, responsibility, and good and evil. It then moves into scientific questions surrounding death, brain death, disorders of consciousness, and the possibility of survival after death. In its later sections, it compares different understandings of the human being in Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, and Theosophy, and concludes by examining the differences between human beings and artificial intelligence (AI). The question is simple: What Is a Human? Yet the answer cannot be reduced to a single definition. This book seeks to understand the human being as a multidimensional existence—one that has a body, sustains life, experiences the world, develops a sense of self, forms relationships with others, asks questions of value, and lives within the limits of finite time.