Some thinkers have try to figure out what we are. Maybe we are creations of God, on our way to Heaven if we behave ourselves properly. Maybe we are part of the chain of Life, started eons ago because of exact chemical and physical properties and substances. The first group is 'religious' and the second might be called 'materialists', since they tend to focus on the materials in and around us and the interaction between different chemicals and processes.
I think many people live loving, joyful lives without worrying about the issues involved. Others are fascinated with investigation and questioning and wonder if all the questions might be answered someday. Human imagination, the ability and use of mental images, consciousness are the sorts of processes that go on in humans but seem impossible to explain with materials. One aspect of the issue that seems, in my cursory explorations, that gets too little consideration is complexity.
It is not difficult to find amazed expression at the number of neurons in our brains. Sometimes it is said that the neurons and the even greater number of possible connections between them is greater than the number of stars in the universe. When I saw the Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin, what I saw took my breath away. Think of the words humans put together in this one library, then in all the libraries. We aren't built to be aware of all that complexity at one time. But we can work in teams and we can build machines that can handle more relations and connections than we can.
Someday, we will have better ideas of what we are and what we can be.
