Sunday, June 23, 2013

Reviving Brain Death: A Functionalist View

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23784534


 2013 Jun 20. [Epub ahead of print]

Reviving Brain Death: A Functionalist View.

Source

Department of Philosophy, Cuyahoga Community College, Western Campus, 11000 Pleasant Valley Road, Parma, OH, 44130-5150, USA, samuel.lipuma@tri-c.edu.

Abstract

Recently both whole brain death (WBD) and higher brain death (HBD) have come under attack. These attacks, we argue, are successful, leaving supporters of both views without a firm foundation. This state of affairs has been described as "the death of brain death." Returning to a cardiopulmonary definition presents problems we also find unacceptable. Instead, we attempt to revive brain death by offering a novel and more coherent standard of death based on the permanent cessation of mental processing. This approach works, we claim, by being functionalist instead of being based in biology, consciousness, or personhood. We begin by explaining why an objective biological determination of death fails. We continue by similarly rejecting current arguments offered in support of HBD, which rely on consciousness and/or personhood. In the final section, we explain and defend our functionalist view of death. Our definition centers on mental processing, both conscious and preconscious or unconscious. This view provides the philosophical basis of a functional definition that most accurately reflects the original spirit of brain death when first proposed in theHarvard criteria of 1968.

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