What More, If Anything, Is There To Death Than The Irreversible Loss Of Consciousness?
Life and Death have profound meaning to humans as living entities. On the plain face of things, a simple response to the question is that views would vary greatly depending on one’s religious, cultural or personal beliefs. For some, it is a lot more than just irreversible unconsciousness. A transplant surgeon for example would see it as a chance to give a new life to someone with a failing organ. The religious would see it as a process that allows for the soul to move to the next realm. Others like the ‘Absurdists‘ ; Albert Camus the French novelist being a famous example would indeed view death as death itself and nothing other than ceasing to exist permanently. But as to whether any of these people would agree with defining death using consciousness as a descriptive term, one has to wonder. The point being raised is that the question at hand is not to theologically or philosophically debate as to if there is anything more to death but rather if it is acceptable to state irreversible loss of consciousness as death itself.
Most would think it’s quite intuitive and say that of course the dead are unconsciousness and never going to be conscious again. The reason for this is that one often has a mental picture of a non-respiring, non heart beating, decaying corpse in mind when pondering this thought. What we fail to give thought to is that there are now other criteria to death besides the traditional cardio-respiratory criteria (no pulse or breathing), brain death being the latest one. Brain death is essentially near total destruction of ones brain and brainstem as defined by numerous medical and legal guidelines. Persistent unconsciousness though is only one of its required criteria. (The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society)
The brain dead may have hearts that are still beating and chests that are still moving with the help of respirators despite being unconscious. There are also those with brain injuries who are in a persistent...
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