PHI 2396 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Organ Transplantation, Brain Death, Organ Donation
11 Sep 2017
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Is someone dead when they are brain dead. (heart is still working) Problems: movement or lack of movement, lack f breathing, lack of heart and lung function, lack of brain activity, higher and lower brain activity. We have a brain structure that regulates our breathing ex (lower brain structure). There are higher brain structures that will control consciousness and intellectual ability. The argument here is do you keep someone alive if they have lost higher brain function. There is criteria to defining death- lousi pojman: the departure of the soul from the body ( breathing, the irreversible cessation of cardiovascular pulmonary function, whole brain death, neurocortical or higher brain death. How is death connected to philosophical questions about nature of personhood. Personhood involves rationality and awareness which pushes philosophers to argue that without higher brain activity there cannot be said to be alive.
