The brain death criterion and the soul

[Contrabass101]

In recent decades, society at large has changed it’s basic ethical foundation from “It is unlawful to murder a human being” to “One should as far as possible avoid the suffering of conscious beings”. Symptomatically, animals are getting rights and embryoes are losing them.

This shift, obviously, has not been accepted by the Catholic Church, and many other Christians still hang on to it. It is perhaps the underlying difference between pro- and anti-abortionists. This is also why it is so difficult for these groups to understand each other - they work from opposite ethical axioms. When the disagreement is as fundamental as this, it is extremely hard to get anywhere through argument.

As a Catholic, I believe as the Church teaches, even when I do not fully understand it. In this case, I do not fully understand how the Church at one hand believes that human beings - and so also homicide - is independent of the abilities of the level of consciousness in the person, yet at the other hand in some cases support the brain death criterion for organ transplantation. I realize, as I’m writing this, that I am probably somewhat ignorant on the exact opinion of the Church.

The way I read my Aquinas, though, the soul is that which animates the body, which to me would seem that as long as the body performs even basic functions such as the heart beating, it has a soul. Since it is a human body, it has a human soul. Now death occurs when the soul leaves the body, and it is hard for me to understand how this can occur before the body fully stops being animated.

I would much appreciate any enlightenment on this.

 

[Corki]

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the Church accepts “brain dead” for organ transplants.

The CCC say:

2296 Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks to the donor are proportionate to the good sought for the recipient. Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.

The USCCB says:

Postmortem examinations must not begin until death is morally certain. Vital organs, that is, organs necessary to sustain life, may not be removed until death has taken place. The determination of the time of death must be made in accordance with responsible and commonly accepted scientific criteria. In accordance with current medical practice, to prevent any conflict of interest, the dying patient’s doctor or doctors should ordinarily be distinct from the transplant team.

 

[GEddie]

It’s complex, but somewhat straightforward:

The brain, or at least the brain stem, needs to be in operation for body to continue to hold life. If it stops working, death will occur, because breathing will end; although machinery can keep the organs functioning for a time, the body cannot maintain it’s life.

Being alive is not a matter of certain organs continuing to operate, but of the human body, as a whole, being able to function. As long as one can breathe, even if unconscious, one is alive. But if breathing fails, life ends. That’s just the way we’re made.

ICXC NIKA

 

[HonoraDominum]

There’s a really great sermon over at Audio Sancto that addresses the issue of “brain dead” and what is actually dead. I know that after hearing this, I’m going to change my living will to state that until death is absolutely certain, nothing is to be harvested from my body. (I’ve signed donor cards in the past, so it’s possible that my wishes may be circumvented).

Brain Dead: Dead Means the Soul Has Left the Body

 

[JimG]

As the CCC was quoted in a prior post:

“Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity” (emphasis mine.)

The Church leaves the medical definition of and determination of death up to physicians.

Yet it has always had a philosophical definition of death: when the soul departs the body.
The soul is the animating principle of the body. When the soul departs, death has occurred.

But there is a built in conflict between the Church’s philosophical definition of death and death criteria other than the cessation of heartbeat and breathing. Dead organs are not useful to anyone. Medically, for an organ donation to be useful, the organ must be alive. But if the organ is alive, has the soul departed the body?

 

[Sair]

If the brain is functionally dead, yet other organs are still kept functioning by artificial means, what, in such circumstances, is the value of human life? Is it only the human form of said life?

Not to mention the fact that organ donations and blood donations from other animals (pigs, in particular) to humans have proved successful; would it be more or less problematic to wait until the pig’s death before ‘harvesting’ her organs?

You state that our ethical thinking has moved away from valuing human life as particularly special (over and above all other manifestations of life) and towards considering sentient life to be valuable in general; certainly, this has paved the way for animal rights (which is kind of a misnomer when one considers the fact that humans are, according to biological classification and for all practical purposes, animals) and significantly weighted the abortion debate - after all, a human foetus before about six months of development is most definitely less sentient than the 3-month-old chickens routinely slaughtered for human consumption. If anything, this shift in ethical thinking represents a greater degree of consistency in understanding why life is to be valued and what kind of beings are capable of valuing their lives. The question is not why has human life diminished in value, but why is there still a distinction drawn between the value of human life (qua human life) and the value of sentient life in general?

In my present state of mind, in which I do value my own life and the experiences it allows, I am perfectly content to document my intention that, if at any stage I cease to have the capacity to be aware of my life or value it (if my brain ceases to function), then others should benefit from what I still have to offer.

 

[GEddie]

So far, animal to human grafts have remained experimental, as the human body will reject such at once. But if it became practical, killing the animal for the organs poses no more moral question than eating bacon does. It’s not remotely the same issue as defining human death.

 

[wcknight]

It is a baffling problem for doctors and theologians alike on how to define what constitutes life, death, and the soul.

It used to be that death occurred when the heart stopped beating but we know that folks have been resusitated from heart stoppage. Now it is generally believed that death occurs when the brain stops working, but some folks have experienced brain death and been resusitated (or least some folks claim this has occurred). If that is the case then who can definitively say when/if exactly death has occurred.

To me, I’ve always thought of our souls somehow as belonging to the spiritual realm and we are animated upon conception/birth into the physical realm. In as sense, we live in our physical bodies, but a spiritual self is inserted. But with Einstein discovering that all matter is really just made up of tremendous amounts of energy, I can now imagine that what we regard as our souls can in actuality be energy that consolidates itself (by the grace of God) to form what we know as ourselves.

We know that what functions as our brains, is just millions (or billions) of electrical impulses, passing through million of neurons or receptors. These electrical impulses may have existed long before we were born and can possibly exist indefiniely long after we die. For our life time they have just been consolidated by our bodies and form the self awareness and conciousness of who we are now.

Maybe when we die, the impulses may still exist and be functioning even though we no longer have the physical stuctures to hold them in place. Folks who have NDEs say they are fully aware of their surroundings, even though doctors or others may think they have no body or brain activity.

Could it be that energy, specifically electrical energy is the link between the physical and the spiritual ? Anyway, just a thought…

 

[GEddie]

WK: if what you suggest is true, then there would be no spiritual soul, and no human afterlife at all. The electric fields associated with our head/body disappear in short order once there is no living body to generate them.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA

 

[greylorn]

In recent decades, society at large has changed it’s basic ethical foundation from “It is unlawful to murder a human being” to “One should as far as possible avoid the suffering of conscious beings”. Symptomatically, animals are getting rights and embryoes are losing them.

This shift, obviously, has not been accepted by the Catholic Church, and many other Christians still hang on to it. It is perhaps the underlying difference between pro- and anti-abortionists. This is also why it is so difficult for these groups to understand each other - they work from opposite ethical axioms. When the disagreement is as fundamental as this, it is extremely hard to get anywhere through argument.

As a Catholic, I believe as the Church teaches, even when I do not fully understand it. In this case, I do not fully understand how the Church at one hand believes that human beings - and so also homicide - is independent of the abilities of the level of consciousness in the person, yet at the other hand in some cases support the brain death criterion for organ transplantation. I realize, as I’m writing this, that I am probably somewhat ignorant on the exact opinion of the Church.

The way I read my Aquinas, though, the soul is that which animates the body, which to me would seem that as long as the body performs even basic functions such as the heart beating, it has a soul. Since it is a human body, it has a human soul. Now death occurs when the soul leaves the body, and it is hard for me to understand how this can occur before the body fully stops being animated.

I would much appreciate any enlightenment on this.

Start by looking at your fundamental beliefs. Aquinas was wrong, as might be expected, since he wrote from ignorance of physics and microbiology. The soul is not an animating principle, else cockroaches would have them. Step up to Descartes. He made some mistakes too, but not nearly as horrid as Tom’s.

 

[GEddie]

Start by looking at your fundamental beliefs. Aquinas was wrong, as might be expected, since he wrote from ignorance of physics and microbiology. The soul is not an animating principle, else cockroaches would have them. Step up to Descartes. He made some mistakes too, but not nearly as horrid as Tom’s.

Cockroaches do have a soul. So do other moving, living beings that we know as “animals”. We call them that because “anima” is the Latin word for soul.

What animals do not have is a human soul; which generates a cognitive mind. It is these “higher” propensities, specifically the ability to know God, that makes human beings candidates for Life Everlasting (according to Church philosophy).

ICXC NIKA

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Start by looking at your fundamental beliefs. Aquinas was wrong, as might be expected, since he wrote from ignorance of physics and microbiology. The soul is not an animating principle, else cockroaches would have them. Step up to Descartes. He made some mistakes too, but not nearly as horrid as Tom’s.

He didn’t write based on mechanicalism that you modern philosophers adhere too.

You seems to forget that Aquinas is a Aristotelian and Aristotle defined different souls of existence. Vegetative/nutritive souls, sensory/animal souls, and intellective/rational souls. A soul, in Aquinas’s metaphysics, is a form of a living thing.

You are a Cartesian dualist? Or an offshoot of such? So you define the soul as a complete substance and the body as another. How does a substance that has no physical dimensions or occupation in space have any sort of cause and effect relationship with the material world? Might have heard this objection as the “interaction problem”.

Might want to revisit Aquinas and adopt his hylemorphic dualism, certainly escapes the restrictive nature of mechanicalism and overcomes all objections of other dualisms, especially Descartes.

Contrabass101:

Remember Aquinas always taught Hylemorphism that things in existence have a form and matter. And when it comes to living things their form and matter is realized by also understanding act and potency. That the form/act of a living thing is the soul and the matter/potency is the material substance that which is moved. The matter unto itself is unable to move itself, which is why Aquinas always said “life is essentially that by which anything has power to move itself”, "the word life is used of all things which have in them the principle of their own activity, and that “all things that are said to be alive that determine themselves to movement or operation of any kind.”

As long as their is life in the body, be it passive powers such as heart beats or breathing or active powers such as locomotion or speech, the soul is there as well.

 

[GEddie]

Heart beat is not sufficient for life, because it can actually beat without a body (or in a dead body) until it runs out of oxygen. This is in fact why they can be transplanted.

Brain function is closer to the mark, because without at least the brain stem running, body functions cannot carry on. A body whose brain is completely nonfunctional cannot hold life, even with a beating heart.

Ideally, death would not be pronounced until all the organs stopped working. But that would mean the organs would never be used.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Heart beat is not sufficient for life, because it can actually beat without a body (or in a dead body) until it runs out of oxygen. This is in fact why they can be transplanted.

Brain function is closer to the mark, because without at least the brain stem running, body functions cannot carry on. A body whose brain is completely nonfunctional cannot hold life, even with a beating heart.

Ideally, death would not be pronounced until all the organs stopped working. But that would mean the organs would never be used.

ICXC NIKA.

I don’t think their will be a dogmatic claim about this though. Pope John Paul II did say as such and the investigation Pope Benedict revived about this seems to still reaffirm the claim. I’m no neurologist, but is it possible that the inability to reverse nonfunctional brain activity is due to limitations in present medical abilities? Or is it just a flat impossibility? Also, without any scientific observation of souls, who’s to truly say the soul left the body? Is there absolute certainty in this matter?

 

[greylorn]

He didn’t write based on mechanicalism that you modern philosophers adhere too.

You seems to forget that Aquinas is a Aristotelian and Aristotle defined different souls of existence. Vegetative/nutritive souls, sensory/animal souls, and intellective/rational souls. A soul, in Aquinas’s metaphysics, is a form of a living thing.

You are a Cartesian dualist? Or an offshoot of such? So you define the soul as a complete substance and the body as another. How does a substance that has no physical dimensions or occupation in space have any sort of cause and effect relationship with the material world? Might have heard this objection as the “interaction problem”.

Might want to revisit Aquinas and adopt his hylemorphic dualism, certainly escapes the restrictive nature of mechanicalism and overcomes all objections of other dualisms, especially Descartes.

There’s little point in pursuing a conversation with a dogmatist, but before I decline to do so, consider your statement, made from a profound ignorance of high school physics… “How does a substance that has no physical dimensions or occupation in space have any sort of cause and effect relationship with the material world?”

You might want to study up on photons, the transmitters of electromagnetic energy, which convey the little knowledge we have about the universe from distant galaxies and beyond. Photons occupy no space. Defined in terms of internal energy swaps per unit of time, they have no physical dimensions.

Yet, all the energy which sustains life on this planet has been and will be delivered by photons.

 

[greylorn]

Cockroaches do have a soul. So do other moving, living beings that we know as “animals”. We call them that because “anima” is the Latin word for soul.

What animals do not have is a human soul; which generates a cognitive mind. It is these “higher” propensities, specifically the ability to know God, that makes human beings candidates for Life Everlasting (according to Church philosophy).

ICXC NIKA

Let’s have a definition of human soul and another for cockroach soul, focusing upon whatever distinctions you imagine might exist between them.

Kindly muster your intelligence and provide definitions in terms of demonstrable physical properties, without resorting to dogma.

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

There’s little point in pursuing a conversation with a dogmatist, but before I decline to do so, consider your statement, made from a profound ignorance of high school physics… “How does a substance that has no physical dimensions or occupation in space have any sort of cause and effect relationship with the material world?”

You might want to study up on photons, the transmitters of electromagnetic energy, which convey the little knowledge we have about the universe from distant galaxies and beyond. Photons occupy no space. Defined in terms of internal energy swaps per unit of time, they have no physical dimensions.

Yet, all the energy which sustains life on this planet has been and will be delivered by photons.

So we’re introducing quantifiable things such as photons into a discussion of unquantifiable things such as souls.

 

[GEddie]

I don’t think their will be a dogmatic claim about this though. Pope John Paul II did say as such and the investigation Pope Benedict revived about this seems to still reaffirm the claim. I’m no neurologist, but is it possible that the inability to reverse nonfunctional brain activity is due to limitations in present medical abilities? Or is it just a flat impossibility? Also, without any scientific observation of souls, who’s to truly say the soul left the body? Is there absolute certainty in this matter?

If nonfunctional brain activity can one day be reversed (and maybe it can; after all, 150 years ago, they couldn’t even restart somebody’s breathing), that would eliminate organ donation except in instances where the brain was physically wrecked or off the body (ie, head trauma or decapitation).

If the soul is truly immaterial (as philosophy holds) then it is immeasurable to science. No one will ever see a soul in motion; they will always have to guess.

ICXC NIKA

 

[wcknight]

WK: if what you suggest is true, then there would be no spiritual soul, and no human afterlife at all. The electric fields associated with our head/body disappear in short order once there is no living body to generate them.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA

No, energy never goes away. It lasts forever. I’m suggesting that somehow after we die, we don’t need physical brains to retain or consolidate electrical impulses. The electrical impulses may no longer be in our heads but remain in existence somewhere in the universe.

How we retain our conciousness afterwards, only God knows.

 

[GEddie]

No, energy never goes away. It lasts forever. I’m suggesting that somehow after we die, we don’t need physical brains to retain or consolidate electrical impulses. The electrical impulses may no longer be in our heads but remain in existence somewhere in the universe.

How we retain our conciousness afterwards, only God knows.

Energy does not go away, however, it’s informational propensities (ie, your mind) can be lost. When light rays strike a black cloth, their energy does not “go away”, but you can no longer see by them.

Energy, like matter, is subject to the law of entropy. Once the energy is no longer being generated (ie, by a living body), it becomes dissipated and unusable.

Wherever our consciousness resumes (ie, our pneumatikon soma) it will not be within the entropic universe of our first life.

ICXC NIKA.