Śmierć mózgowa - kontrowersje i uzgodnienia

Abstract

Human death is challenging from both philosophical and medical points of view, because of a tension between the diagnosis of death of the organism as a whole and the declaration of death of a human person. BRAIN DEATH: CONTROVERSIES AND AGREEMENTS Human death is challenging from both philosophical and medical points of view, because of an apparent ontological discrepancy between the diagnosis of death of the organism as a whole and the declaration of death of a human person. In my paper I make an attempt to analyze the main controversies as well as agreements concerning ontological and medico-epistemological problems that have created the evolution of the definition of brain death, arguing that: 1. It is impossible to define death; 2. What functions as the definition of death is rather a set of criteria of death than a definition in a proper sense; 3. The debate concerning so-called definition of death refers not to death as such, universally conceptualized, but to a specific problem of death of a human being; 4. Analyzing the problem of human death it is impossible to make a clear distinction between biological and philosophical dimensions.

Keywords

• Death of the organism as a whole
• death of a person
• brain death
• total brain failure