Online research in philosophy

Philosophers have simplified brain death issues by drawing two distinctions--that between dead persons and dead bodies or organisms, and that between the concept of definition of death and the criteria for determining when and that death has occurred. The result has been protracted debates as to whether the death of patients is the death of persons or the death of organisms, and whether physicians should use cardio-respiratory criteria, whole brain criteria, or higher brain criteria. Advocates of the death of persons prefer higher brain criteria; advocates of the death of organisms prefer cardiovascular criteria; but both will compromise, for different reasons, on the whole brain criteria that most legislators have come to accept. Advocates of person-death regard whole brain criteria as unnecessarily demanding and woefully wasteful of transplantable organs and nursing care. Nonetheless, they accept current whole-brain based legislation as a first neurological step away from traditional cardio-respiratory.

Death and Philosophy presents a wide ranging and fascinating variety of different philosophical, aesthetic and literary perspectives on death. Death raises key questions such as whether life has meaning of life in the face of death, what the meaning of "life after death" might be and whether death is part of a narrative that can be retold in different ways, and considers the various types of death, such as brain death, that challenge mind-body dualism. The essays also include explorations of Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan perspectives on death and why death in some cultures, such as in Mexico's day of the dead, is celebrated.

: Most of the world now accepts the idea, first proposed four decades ago, that death means "brain death." But the idea has always been open to criticism because it doesn't square with all of our intuitions about death. In fact, none of the possible definitions of death quite works. Death, perhaps surprisingly, eludes definition, and "brain death" can be accepted only as a refinement of what is in fact a fuzzy concept.

As of 2009, the number of donors in Japan is the lowest among developed countries. On July 13, 2009, Japan's Organ Transplant Law was revised for the first time in 12 years. The revised and old laws differ greatly on four primary points: the definition of death, age requirements for donors, requirements for brain-death determination and organ extraction, and the appropriateness of priority transplants for relatives.In the four months of deliberations in the National Diet before the new law was established, various arguments regarding brain death and organ transplantation were offered. An amazing variety of opinions continue to be offered, even after more than 40 years have elapsed since the first heart organ transplant in Japan. Some are of the opinion that with the passage of the revised law, Japan will finally become capable of performing transplants according to global standards. Contrarily, there are assertions that organ transplants from brain-dead donors are unacceptable because they result in organs being taken from living human beings.Considering the current conditions, we will organize and introduce the arguments for and against organ transplants from brain-dead donors in contemporary Japan. Subsequently, we will discuss the primary arguments against organ transplants from brain-dead donors from the perspective of contemporary Japanese views on life and death. After introducing the recent view that brain death should not be regarded as equivalent to the death of a human being, we would like to probe the deeply-rooted views on life and death upon which it is based.

In this paper I address three problems posed by modern medical technology regarding comatose dying patients. The first is that physicians sometimes hide behind the tests for whole-brain death rather than make the necessary human decision. The second is that the tests themselves betray a metaphysical judgment about death that may be ontologically faulty. The third is that discretion used by physicians and patients and/or family in deciding to cease treatment when the whole-brain death criteria may not be met are sometimes open to challenge. In each of these problems I find that the operative concept of death relates to life itself. This point is expanded by examining the uses of the word death in our language and culture. From these I formulate an initial ontology of death. In it, death is described through a relationship with life, rather than as an absence of life, of consciousness, awareness, or sensation. This ontology then leads to a proposal for an ethics of discretion about the discontinuation of treatment for comatose patients.

The philosophy of our proposal are as follows: (1) Various ideas of life and death, including that of objecting to brain death as human death, should be guaranteed. We would like to maintain the idea of pluralism of human death; and (2) We should respect a child’s view of life and death. We should provide him/her with an opportunity to think and express their own ideas about life and death.

Brain death is accepted in most countries as death. The rationales to explain why brain death is death are surprisingly problematic. The standard rationale that in brain death there has been loss of integrative unity of the organism has been shown to be false, and a better rationale has not been clearly articulated. Recent expert defences of the brain death concept are examined in this paper, and are suggested to be inadequate. I argue that, ironically, these defences demonstrate the lack of a defensible rationale for why brain death should be accepted as death itself. If brain death is death, a conceptual rationale for brain death being equivalent to death should be clarified, and this should be done urgently.

The Japanese Transplantation Law is unique among others in that it allows us to choose between "brain death" and "traditional death" as our death. In every country 20 to 40 % of the popularion doubts the idea of brain death. This paper reconsiders the concept, and reports the ongoing rivision process of the current law. Published in Hastings Center Report, 2001.

This book shifted the Japanese debate on brain death from "brain-centered analysis" to "human relationship oriented analysis." I defined that brain death means a form of human relationships between a comatose patient and the people surrounding him/her in the ICU. I paid special attention to the emotional aspect and the inner reality of the family members of a brain dead person, because sometimes the family members at the bedside, touching the warm body of the patient, express the feeling that the brain dead person still continues to exist as a living human being. This approach, published more than 10 years ago, has deeply influenced Japanese bioethics, and would probably influence English bioethics, too. Chapter 1 deals with "brain death as a form of human relationships" theory. Published in 1989.