Finding Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philosophy

Cutting edge (recent science)
Dramatic issues (life or death)
Controversial
Leading contributors
Variety of disciplines and perspectives
Accessible writing

Finding Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philosophy

Description

Modern medicine enables us to keep many people alive after they have suffered severe brain damage and show no reliable outward signs of consciousness. Many such patients are misdiagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state when they are actually in a minimally conscious state. This mistake has far-reaching implications for treatment and prognosis. To alleviate this problem, neuroscientists have recently developed new brain-scanning methods to detect consciousness in some of these patients and even to ask them questions, including "Do you want to stay alive?"

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage addresses many questions regarding these recent neuroscientific methods: Is what these methods detect really consciousness? Do patients feel pain? Should we decide whether or not to let them die or are they competent to decide for themselves? And which kinds of treatment should governments and hospitals make available? This edited volume provides contextual information, surveys the issues and positions, and takes controversial stands from a wide variety of prominent contributors in fields ranging from neuroscience and neurology to law and policy to philosophy and ethics. Finding Consciousness should interest not only neuroscientists, clinicians, and ethicists but anyone who might suffer brain damage, which includes us all.

Finding Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philosophy

1 - Finding Consciousness: An Introduction
By Meghan Brayton and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

2 - Discussion with a Caring Father
By Ken Diviney and Katherine Grichnik

PART I: Consciousness

3 - The Geography of Unconsciousness: From Apparent Death to the Minimally Conscious State
By Jeffrey Baker

4 - Consciousness and Death: The Whole-Brain Formulation of Death
By James L. Bernat

5 - Modes of Consciousness
By Tim Bayne and Jakob Hohwy

PART II: Diagnosis

6 - What is it like to be in a Disorder of Consciousness
By Caroline Schnakers

7 - Decoding Thoughts in Behaviorally Non-Responsive Patients
By Adrian Owen and Lorina Naci

8 - Persistent Vegetative State, Akinetic Mutism, and Consciousness
By Will Davies and Neil Levy

PART III: Ethics

9 - Lay Attitudes to Withdrawal of Treatment in Disorders of Consciousness and Their Normative Significance
By Jacob Gipson, Guy Kahane, and Julian Savulescu

10 - Moral Conflict in the Minimally Conscious State
By Joshua Shepherd

11 - What's Good for Them? Best Interests and Severe Disorders of Consciousness
By Jennifer Hawkins

12 - Minimally Conscious States and Pain: A Different Approach to Patient Ethics
By Valerie Gray Hardcastle

PART IV: Law

13 - The Legal Circle of Life
By Nita Farahany and Rachel Zacharias

14 - Guardianship and the Injured Brain: Representation and the Rights of Patients and Families

By Joseph Fins and Barbara Pohl

References

Index

Finding Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philosophy

Author Information

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, PhD, is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University in the Philosophy Department, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Law School. He has served as co-chair of the Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association and co-director of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project. He publishes widely in ethics, moral psychology and neuroscience, philosophy of law, epistemology, informal logic, and philosophy of religion.

Contributors:

Jeffrey Baker
Department of Pediatrics
Duke University
Durham, NC USA

Tim Bayne
School of Social Sciences
University of Manchester
Manchester, United Kingdom

James L. Bernat
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH USA

Meghan Brayton
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University
Durham, NC USA

Will Davies
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Oxford, United Kingdom

Ken Diviney

Nita Farahany
School of Law
Duke University
Durham, NC USA

Joseph Fins
Weill Cornell Medical College
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY USA

Jacob Gibson
Central Clinical School
Monash University
Victoria, Australia

Katherine Grichnik
Mednax National Medical Group
Sunrise, FL USA

Valerie Gray Hardcastle
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH

Jennifer Hawkins
Department of Philosophy
Duke University
Durham, NC USA

Jakob Hohwy
Faculty of Arts
Monash University
Victoria, Australia
Guy Kahane
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Oxford, United Kingdom

Neil Levy
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Oxford, United Kingdom

Lorina Naci
Experimental Psychology
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada

Adrian Owen
Department of Psychology
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada

Barbara Pohl
Weill Cornell Medical College
New York, NY USA

Julian Savulescu
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Oxford, United Kingdom

Caroline Schnakers
Department of Neurosurgery
University of California at Los Angeles

Joshua Shepherd
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Oxford, United Kingdom

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Department of Philosophy
Duke University
Durham, NC USA

Rachel Zacharias
Duke University
Durham, NC USA

Finding Consciousness

The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philosophy

Reviews and Awards

"You think people are either conscious or not? Think again. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong takes us by the hand through a forest of clinical exceptions and leaves us wondering what the very concept of consciousness really means. It is a brilliant analysis and collection of primary papers not to be missed because depending on the answer, we will decide whether or not to freely pull the plug on gramps." --Michael Gazzaniga, PhD, Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara