PHIL 1165 Lecture 7: Brain Death

• School: Northeastern University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 1165
• Professor: John Weagraff

Document Summary

Moral and social problems in healthcare: end of life, brain death i. Irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain: harvard criteria, unresponsiveness, no movement or breathing, no reflexes, flat eeg ii. Controversies: brain death = being dead, world religions perspective i. ii. Point of death - body vs soul iii. Bernat: biophysical analysis of death, paradigm i. ii. Set of conditions and assumptions regarding the nature of a thing. 1: biological phenomenon, death of organism not spirit or soul, restricted to higher vertebrates, applicable only to organisms, dead or alive, only two states, event, not a process. Irreversible vs permanent: with death, there is no way to revive the organs // organism iii. Ignores the mind, soul and spirit: cartesian dualism, definition. Ordinary usage i: what constitutes a living organism, dynamics - signs of life. Integration - mutual interaction of component parts: coordination - interactions have order. Immanency - intrinsic rather than extrinsic: criterion i.