Understanding Higher-Brain Death Within a Biological Paradigm

In the bioethical literature, a common objection to the higher-brain standard of death is that it fails to treat death as a biological phenomenon. Biological death, so the argument goes, can occur after the irreversible loss of consciousness, and so the loss of higher-brain structures responsible for consciousness cannot be sufficient for biological death. Against this argument, this paper will examine two accounts of biological death, the “integrative functioning” account and the “fundamental work” account, and conclude that neither of them refutes the higher-brain standard. In support of this view, I make two claims: (1) that the deaths of conscious organisms cannot be defined purely in terms of integrated functioning and (2) that the “fundamental work” definition plausibly includes the irreversible loss of consciousness as a sufficient condition for death. The upshot of this argument is that the higher-brain standard is compatible with at least one biological account of death.