Are humans unique? | CMF National Conference 2026

What is the nature of the person in front of you? Whether that is in the GP surgery, on the wards, in the operating room.

What we actually believe a human being is vastly impacts how we care for a person, how we treat them and how we educate them.

Perhaps we can agree that when it comes to uniqueness, certainly one quality that distinguishes us from most other creatures is that we are conscious beings.

We do extraordinary things.

We create poetry.

We write philosophy.

We invent technology.

We dance.

and sing, we laugh, we fall in love, we grieve the loss of loved ones, we contemplate our own existence.

And though a small number of other animal species are doing some of these, some of the time, no other species is doing all of them, all of the time.

Perhaps René Descartes, the philosopher, was right when he said that the aspect of humanity that we know with most certainty is that we are conscious.

cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am.

We have a sense of self.

We have a point of view.

Now part of my own story is that although I came to faith later on and I wasn't raised in a Christian home, I remember sitting by a window as a child watching rain splash against the pane and suddenly a series of questions came to mind.

Why can I think? Why do I exist? Why am I a living, breathing, conscious human being? It's as though I had an awareness of my own consciousness.

We are conscious beings, or as the philosopher Thomas Nagel once put it, there is something that it is like to be you.

There is something that it is like to be you.