Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage
Modern medicine enables us to keep many people alive after they have suffered severe brain damage and show no reliable outward signs of consciousness. Many such patients are misdiagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state when they are actually in a minimally conscious state. This mistake has far-reaching implications for treatment and prognosis. To alleviate this problem, neuroscientists have recently developed new brain-scanning methods to detect consciousness in some of these patients and even to ask them questions, including "Do you want to stay alive?"

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage addresses many questions regarding these recent neuroscientific methods: Is what these methods detect really consciousness? Do patients feel pain? Should we decide whether or not to let them die or are they competent to decide for themselves? And which kinds of treatment should governments and hospitals make available? This edited volume provides contextual information, surveys the issues and positions, and takes controversial stands from a wide variety of prominent contributors in fields ranging from neuroscience and neurology to law and policy to philosophy and ethics. Finding Consciousness should interest not only neuroscientists, clinicians, and ethicists but anyone who might suffer brain damage, which includes us all.
1122747369
Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage
Modern medicine enables us to keep many people alive after they have suffered severe brain damage and show no reliable outward signs of consciousness. Many such patients are misdiagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state when they are actually in a minimally conscious state. This mistake has far-reaching implications for treatment and prognosis. To alleviate this problem, neuroscientists have recently developed new brain-scanning methods to detect consciousness in some of these patients and even to ask them questions, including "Do you want to stay alive?"

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage addresses many questions regarding these recent neuroscientific methods: Is what these methods detect really consciousness? Do patients feel pain? Should we decide whether or not to let them die or are they competent to decide for themselves? And which kinds of treatment should governments and hospitals make available? This edited volume provides contextual information, surveys the issues and positions, and takes controversial stands from a wide variety of prominent contributors in fields ranging from neuroscience and neurology to law and policy to philosophy and ethics. Finding Consciousness should interest not only neuroscientists, clinicians, and ethicists but anyone who might suffer brain damage, which includes us all.
110.0 In Stock
Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage

by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Hardcover

$110.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Modern medicine enables us to keep many people alive after they have suffered severe brain damage and show no reliable outward signs of consciousness. Many such patients are misdiagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state when they are actually in a minimally conscious state. This mistake has far-reaching implications for treatment and prognosis. To alleviate this problem, neuroscientists have recently developed new brain-scanning methods to detect consciousness in some of these patients and even to ask them questions, including "Do you want to stay alive?"

Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage addresses many questions regarding these recent neuroscientific methods: Is what these methods detect really consciousness? Do patients feel pain? Should we decide whether or not to let them die or are they competent to decide for themselves? And which kinds of treatment should governments and hospitals make available? This edited volume provides contextual information, surveys the issues and positions, and takes controversial stands from a wide variety of prominent contributors in fields ranging from neuroscience and neurology to law and policy to philosophy and ethics. Finding Consciousness should interest not only neuroscientists, clinicians, and ethicists but anyone who might suffer brain damage, which includes us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780190280307
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 02/10/2016
Series: Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philosophy
Pages: 280
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, PhD, is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University in the Philosophy Department, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Law School. He has served as co-chair of the Board of Officers of the American Philosophical Association and co-director of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project. He publishes widely in ethics, moral psychology and neuroscience, philosophy of law, epistemology, informal logic, and philosophy of religion.

Table of Contents

1 - Finding Consciousness: An Introduction
By Meghan Brayton and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

2 - Discussion with a Caring Father
By Ken Diviney and Katherine Grichnik


PART I: Consciousness

3 - The Geography of Unconsciousness: From Apparent Death to the Minimally Conscious State
By Jeffrey Baker

4 - Consciousness and Death: The Whole-Brain Formulation of Death
By James L. Bernat

5 - Modes of Consciousness
By Tim Bayne and Jakob Hohwy


PART II: Diagnosis

6 - What is it like to be in a Disorder of Consciousness
By Caroline Schnakers

7 - Decoding Thoughts in Behaviorally Non-Responsive Patients
By Adrian Owen and Lorina Naci

8 - Persistent Vegetative State, Akinetic Mutism, and Consciousness
By Will Davies and Neil Levy


PART III: Ethics

9 - Lay Attitudes to Withdrawal of Treatment in Disorders of Consciousness and Their Normative Significance
By Jacob Gipson, Guy Kahane, and Julian Savulescu

10 - Moral Conflict in the Minimally Conscious State
By Joshua Shepherd

11 - What's Good for Them? Best Interests and Severe Disorders of Consciousness
By Jennifer Hawkins

12 - Minimally Conscious States and Pain: A Different Approach to Patient Ethics
By Valerie Gray Hardcastle


PART IV: Law

13 - The Legal Circle of Life
By Nita Farahany and Rachel Zacharias

14 - Guardianship and the Injured Brain: Representation and the Rights of Patients and Families

By Joseph Fins and Barbara Pohl

References

Index
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews