The Southern Journal zyxwvut of Philosophy zyxwvu (1985) zyxwvu Vol. XXIII, No. 3 HOW NOT zyxwv TO DEFINE DEATH: SOME OBJECTIONS TO COGNITIVE APPROACHES* Michael Lavin University of Tennessee/ Knoxville Some philosophers have argued that philosophical theories of personal identity help select the correct definition of human death.’ Memory theories of personal identity have been especially popular among philosophers seeking to define death. For example, Youngner and Bartlett have recently argued that human death is correctly defined as an “irreversible loss of consciousness and cognition.”* Before Youngner and Bartlett, Green and Wikler had contended the best theory of personal identity identified the definition of death for humans who have been persons as permanent loss of consciousness.~ The best theory of personal identity, as Green and Wikler see things, is a causal variant of the memory theory. The moment we have permanently lost our personal identity we are dead. To show that a patient, say “Jones,” has permanently lost his identity as Jones, and also that no one else is Jones, is to show that Jones does not exist. “And this,” Green and Wikler say, “establishes that Jones is dead.”4 As Green and Winkler saw matters, the best theory of personal identity gave the permanent loss of consciousness definition of human death an intuitively satisfying ontological basis. It presumably helps explain the reason why some people believe permanently comatose patients such as Karen Quinlan are dead. In what follows I shall argue against definitions of death, human or otherwise, based on mentalistic criteria. To this end I initially defend the prima facie plausibility of speaking of a person’s death when confronted with the loss of certain mentalistic criteria for personal identity as the chief rationale for cognitive definitions of death as seems in fact to be the common motivation of mentalists. Unfortunately for mentalists, the resulting linkage of death and loss of personal identity results in conflating the two notions. If, though, mentalists abandon personal identity as the chief rationale for the definition in favor of a rationale in terms of loss of personhood, the apparent plausibility of the definition not only diminishes, but the definition becomes implausible. Whether an organism is dead depends, if I am right, on facts independent of whether the organism has ever had a mental life. Accordingly, I intend Michael Lavin is currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Universiiy of Tennessee1 Knoxville. a position he accepted after a year zyxw as an NIMHpostdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatryat the University of Wisconsin1Madison. He received his Ph. D. in I983 from Stanford. 313