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Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative

The mainstream concept of death—the biological one—identifies death with the cessation of an organism. In this article, I challenge the mainstream position, showing that there is no single well-established concept of an organism and no universal concept of death in biological terms. Moreover, some o...

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Autor principal: Nowak, Piotr Grzegorz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10501183/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37134311
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhad018
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author Nowak, Piotr Grzegorz
author_facet Nowak, Piotr Grzegorz
author_sort Nowak, Piotr Grzegorz
collection PubMed
description The mainstream concept of death—the biological one—identifies death with the cessation of an organism. In this article, I challenge the mainstream position, showing that there is no single well-established concept of an organism and no universal concept of death in biological terms. Moreover, some of the biological views on death, if applied in the context of bedside decisions, might imply unacceptable consequences. I argue the moral concept of death—one similar to that of Robert Veatch—overcomes such difficulties. The moral view identifies death with the irreversible cessation of a patient’s moral status, that is, a state when she can no longer be harmed or wronged. The death of a patient takes place when she is no longer capable of regaining her consciousness. In this regard, the proposal elaborated herein resembles that of Veatch yet differs from Veatch’s original project since it is universal. In essence, it is applicable in the case of other living beings such as animals and plants, provided that they have some moral status.
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spelling pubmed-105011832023-09-15 Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative Nowak, Piotr Grzegorz J Med Philos Articles The mainstream concept of death—the biological one—identifies death with the cessation of an organism. In this article, I challenge the mainstream position, showing that there is no single well-established concept of an organism and no universal concept of death in biological terms. Moreover, some of the biological views on death, if applied in the context of bedside decisions, might imply unacceptable consequences. I argue the moral concept of death—one similar to that of Robert Veatch—overcomes such difficulties. The moral view identifies death with the irreversible cessation of a patient’s moral status, that is, a state when she can no longer be harmed or wronged. The death of a patient takes place when she is no longer capable of regaining her consciousness. In this regard, the proposal elaborated herein resembles that of Veatch yet differs from Veatch’s original project since it is universal. In essence, it is applicable in the case of other living beings such as animals and plants, provided that they have some moral status. Oxford University Press 2023-05-03 /pmc/articles/PMC10501183/ /pubmed/37134311 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhad018 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Articles
Nowak, Piotr Grzegorz
Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative
title Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative
title_full Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative
title_fullStr Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative
title_full_unstemmed Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative
title_short Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative
title_sort death as the cessation of an organism and the moral status alternative
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10501183/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37134311
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhad018
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