my philsophical question!

well that's the thing. Life is life. You should read this book "the selfish gene" by richard dawkins. In my humble opinion, i agree with the premise of the book. We are just dna recepticles, and all it's trying to do is live on. WHich is through procreating with the next set of genes that will insure that. From there you can just look at Evolutionary psychology and ethology, where these scientist study humans/human behaviour like they would any other animal (without any cultural or ideaological interferences). Now of course we are homo saipiens saipiens (wise wise men) so rather then runing around like vessels of unadulterated psychology (animals), these primordeal instincts/survival traits are our foundations, then we have intellect above it, and they both influence each other.

What i can't understand is how people claim some ideaology is "truth", when really you are just born into it, depending on where you live on this earth (wherever your dna ended up). ALso just looking at history/art history and just look at how other beliefs influence/create others. I mean all religions had a begining, so what was "truth" before that? The most predominant religions exist because in their teachings they are "crusading" religions. It's how buddahism came to china, how islam came to parts of africa and spain (moors) and how christianity came to west and south america.

Self awareness counts for everything. It is the whole thing. And, ponder this: "We are all made up of stardust. When you look up into the sky at the stars, realize that you are the universe looking at itself," Carl Sagan.

You could also ask, "what's the difference between a cell and a finger"?
In fact, very little. But I guess the real difference occurs once there is a brain... that's where consciousness comes from. Somehow all the synapses create thoughts, and allow for emotions and a certain understanding of time and sequential consequences. Monkeys already know how to create tools... which proves that they have an idea of cause and effect... which allows them to project an action into the future. I guess all "higher" animals have a certain consciousness... I'm thinking of porpoises, whales, elephants and the great apes.
Perhaps mammals in general? But then, a spider builds a web (like a tool) and must either do it totally instinctively or somehow know that the result will be "dinner".
Don't know if anything I've said here helps, but at least it's worth thinnking about...

Try tackling "Goedel, Escher, Bach," by Douglas Hofstadter. Hofstadter is knowledgable in several disciplines, with a focus in artificial intelligence. It's a dense read, and long, but you don't have to read it straight through. Find the chapters about the brain and read those. In particular, read the chapter "Ant-eater's Fugue," and the following chapter. The book covers more than your question, but your question is at the heart of it. He's asking, "What is self-awareness? What makes us a self?" It's a *beep*

The whole is more than the sum of it's parts.

Aomeba, a single cell organism is self aware and has conciuosness, while being a single cell. It is unknown if it is aware of its conciuosness, jsut like its unknown if, say, bears are. We often call the electronic inpulses in our brran that is what creates the though "soul". it is however in no way similar to what religion wants us to think.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.

This post is absurd. What is the difference between a cell and a human? If you are trying to equate them, they can only ever be on equal grounds in the most abstract sense - that is, in the idea that they both are 'alive'. But you should realize, in order to arrive at such an abstract answer, you had to strip away or ignore a lot of inconvenient data - like, everything that separates and distinguishes a man from a cell, which is millions and millions of points!

Not to mention, the idea that a cell and a human are alive in the same way is a inherent literary bias that stems from the literate world's fascination with uniform continuity. If a cell is alive, it is not alive in the same way in which our word alive signifies, it is merely that there is no truly appropriate word for the unique 'aliveness' of a cell, particularly because we have no experience with such a state.

Here is one major different: a man is composed of cells, a cell is not composed of men. How can you try to align these two things?

All these answers were quite correct-especially the one with stated Hawkings,Richard there...but this is all so depict of what one call deconstruction of tought and feelings,just what it is like speaking and writing...that is to say that the logocentric point of wiev dont hold up in the primordian man-because there was not the word,the logon in the beginning...in the beginning was this...then the logic came out and people were satisfyed becaquse life had a meaning..in reality we create our own meaning,trough children,arts,women etc...ita all uo to you...but there are good choices and bad ones.