Why psychological accounts of personal identity can accept a brain death criterion and biological definition of death

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (5):403-418 (2019)
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Abstract

Psychological accounts of personal identity claim that the human person is not identical to the human animal. Advocates of such accounts maintain that the definition and criterion of death for a human person should differ from the definition and criterion of death for a human animal. My contention is instead that psychological accounts of personal identity should have human persons dying deaths that are defined biologically, just like the deaths of human animals. Moreover, if brain death is the correct criterion for the death of a human animal, then it is also the correct criterion for the death of a human person. What the nonidentity of persons and animals requires is only that they have distinct criteria for ceasing to exist.

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David B. Hershenov
State University of New York, Buffalo

Citations of this work

Brain death: new questions and fresh perspectives.Farr Curlin - 2019 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (5):355-358.

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References found in this work

Material Beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology.Eric Todd Olson - 1997 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person.Hud Hudson - 2001 - Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

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