Abstract
The question whether and when it is morally appropriate to withdraw life-support from patients diagnosed as being in the persistent vegetative state is one of the most controversial in bioethics. Recent work on the neuroscience of consciousness seems to promise fundamentally to alter the debate, by demonstrating that some entirely unresponsive patients are in fact conscious. In this paper, I argue that though this work is extremely important scientifically, it ought to alter the debate over the moral status of the patients very little. First, the data presented is complex and difficult to interpret; we should be wary of taking the claimed discovery entirely at face value (though the remaining questions will probably be settled by future research). Second, though the demonstration that some of the patients are in fact conscious would show that they are moral patients, and therefore beings whose welfare must be taken into account, it would not, by itself at any rate, show that they have an interest in continued life.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bargh, J.A. and Chartrand, T.L. 1999. ‘The unbearable automaticity of being’. American Psychologist 54: 462–479.
Bargh, J.A.; Gollwitzer, P.M.; Lee-Chai, A.; Barndollar, K.; Troetschel, R. 2001. ‘The automated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, 1014–1027.
Block, N. 1995. ‘On a confusion about a function of consciousness’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 227–287.
Broughton, R.; Billings, R.; Cartwright, R.; Doucette, D.; Edmeads, J.; Edwardh, M.; Ervin, F.; Orchard, B., Hill, R.; Turrell. G. 1994. ‘Homicidal somnambulism: A case report’. Sleep 17: 253–264.
Bruno, M.A.; Pellas, F.; Bernheim. J.L.; Ledoux, D.; Goldman, S.; Demertzi, A.; Majerus, S.; Vanhaudenhuyse, A.; Blandin. V.; Boly, M.; Boveroux, P.; Moonen, G.; Laureys, S.; Schnakers, C. 2008. ‘Quelle vie après le locked-in syndrome?’ Revue Médicale de Liège 63: 445–451.
Carey, B. 2006. ‘Vegetative patient shows signs of awareness, study says’. New York Times September 7.
Carruthers, P. 2004. ‘Suffering without subjectivity’. Philosophical Studies 121, 99–125.
Deheane, S.; Naccache, L.; Le Clec, H.G.; Koechlin E.; Mueller M.; Dehaene-Lambertz, G.; van de Moortele, P.F.; Le Bihan, D. 1998. ‘Imaging unconscious semantic priming’. Nature 395: 597–600.
Deheane, S. and Changeux, J. P. 2003. ‘A neuronal network model linking subjective reports and objective physiological data during conscious perception’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100: 8520–8525.
Dehaene, S.; Changeux, J.P.; Naccache, L.; Sackur. J.; Sergent, C. 2006. ‘Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: A testable taxonomy’. Trends in Cognitive Science 10: 204–211.
Greenberg D.L. 2007. ‘Comment on “Detecting awareness in the vegetative state”’. Science 315(5816): 1221.
Keenan, J.P., Falk, D., and Gallup, G.G., Jr. 2003. The Pace in the Mirror: The Search for the Origins of Consciousness. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Koch, C. 2004. The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach. Roberts & Company.
Laureys, S. 2005. ‘The neural correlates of (un)awareness: Lessons from the vegetative state’. Trends in Cognitive Science 9: 556–559.
Laureys, S.; Perrinm, F.; Schnakers, C.; Boly, M.; Majerus, S. 2005. ‘Residual cognitive function in comatose, vegetative and minimally conscious states’. Current Opinion in Neurology 18: 726–733.
Lucas, R.E.; Clark, A.E.; Georgellis, Y.; Diener, E. 2003. ‘Reexamining adaptation and the set point model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84: 527–539.
McMahan, J. 2002. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Owen, A.M.; Coleman, M.R.; Boly, M.; Davis, M.H.; Laureys, S.; Pickard, J.D. 2006. ‘Detecting awareness in the vegetative state’. Science 5792: 1402.
Owen, A.M.; Coleman, M.R.; Boly, M.; Davis, M.H.; Laureys, S.; Jolles, D.; Pickard, J.D. 2007. ‘Response to “Comments on “Detecting awareness in the vegetative state”’. Science 315(5816): 1221.
Schoenle, P.W.; Witzke, W. 2004. ‘How vegetative is the vegetative state? Preserved semantic processing in vegetative state patients: Evidence from N 400 event-related potentials’. Neurorehabilitation 19: 329–334.
Searle, J.R. 1994. The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Singer, P. 1993 Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Levy, N. What Difference Does Consciousness Make?. Monash Bioethics Review 28, 13–25 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03351310
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03351310