The Case for Pluralism in Death Determination: From Empirical Data to a Policy Proposal

The article defends the pluralist policy of death determination. According to this view, competent persons should be free to choose the criteria under which they should be diagnosed as dead. Our argument partly relies on the diagnosis of the current state of the discussion in the bioethical literature on death determination and partly on empirical evidence that lay intuitions about death determination differ, that is, that there is interpersonal psychological pluralism about death determination. The article then introduces empirical evidence for intrapersonal psychological pluralism about death determination. We argue that intrapersonal psychological pluralism strengthens the case for the pluralist policy of death determination.