#5 living or not?
There are many opinions on what the requirements are to be a “living” being. In the scientific point of view, following the laws of biology, a living being must be composed of organs, which can be divided into tissues and into organelles. On the other hand, in an ethical point of view, “living” beings require a soul, a unique personality and feelings. In addition, in a humanitarian sense, all that is alive must be able to make its own decisions. Unfortunately #5, the main character of the movie ‘Short Circuit’, does not meet the requirements to be considered “living”.
Scientifically, it is impossible for #5 to be a living being. It, as a robot is not composed of various organs working together to make a functioning body. It is made of metal; mechanically manufactured to follow a set number of programs. When a human body is injured, it is able to recover naturally taking time and nutrients to do so, on the other hand #5 replaced his dead arm by cutting it off then attaching a functioning one in the movie, it cannot be considered healing because the way that he had replaced his arm without any pain and little time, is just like replacing a tire.
Ethically, #5 may be categorized as ‘”living”, #5 knew how to express feelings, and humans have the same capabilities. But on the other hand, humans, when born, have the greatest capacity to learn during their first months. And at that time; they learn to express feelings; they already know what pain, discomfort, joy and sadness is. Throughout the movie, #5 learns various things from watching television. For example, there is a scene where #5 sees people dancing on television. And after seeing that, it danced with Stephanie, a character in the movie, perfectly imitating the television. I believe that #5 does not know what emotion is. He has learnt what the emotion ‘funny’ is by watching The Three Scrooges; he learned how to react to a kiss from television. #5 had laughed at a...