5.1.1 |
THE MEANINGS OF LIFE AND DEATH |
When defining a term, there are three approaches which
can be taken:
- empirical-linguistic
- lexical
- stipulative
On the empirical-linguistic approach
the term in question is studied as actually used by a sufficient
number of people, or by people who have special knowledge or
skills in the field concerned. From the synonyms and examples of
usage, and from the contexts in which the term is employed one
then derives (if possible) the objective meaning of this term
for a particular speech community. On the lexical approach
one consults a number of dictionaries and starts from the less
subjective definition(s) given in these dictionaries which
are left over after deleting those which are blatantly
exclusivistic,
supernaturalistic
or clearly wrong for other reasons.
(To take just one example: a traditional dictionary may seriously
want the user to believe that death would also refer to what
is unreal and untrue.) On the stipulative approach the term is
defined in advance in order to make clear what one is talking
about. Ideally, however, the empirical, lexical and stipulative
definitions of a term coincide so that no confusion can arise.
And ideally, the term to be employed has only
one meaning, for homonyms are a notorious source of fallacious
reasoning. Unfortunately, life and to a lesser extent also
death and killing do not fulfil these conditions.
The terms life, to live and living belong
together and we cannot accept any definition according to which the
literal, original meaning of life is not related to what is
characteristic of living beings. These 'living beings', in turn,
must encompass at least all animal beings (including, for
example, human beings) and all plants (including, for example,
bacteria). It is now a question of stipulative definition
whether things such as viruses are also living organisms, or
merely complex protein molecules. Or, if not merely a question of
stipulative definition, then a result of defining another term
in a stipulative way. 'Life' is then the state of an organism
with the capacity for reaction to stimuli and for metabolism and
growth. A being which grows and which can reproduce itself
independently is certainly a living being, but viruses which are
capable of growth and multiplication only in the cells of other
living beings may for this reason be said not to be individual,
living beings. Consequently, if they are not counted as living
beings for this reason, not any organism which needs, or still
needs, an intimate bodily contact with a living individual can
be considered a living being itself. This would not only apply
to viruses but also, say, to spermatozoons and to fetuses if,
and so long as, they need a womb or an artificial system
maintained by human beings to grow and to keep growing. If it
does not make a difference whether the organism needs a woman's
or a man's body to survive and to grow, or whether this is all
taken care of artificially outside anyone's body, then
consistence requires that we forgo this criterion for all
organisms from viruses, or the most simple organisms, to the
most complex ones.
When we look at what characteristic quality, or set of
qualities, living beings such as animals and plants have in common,
our view of them is a nontemporal one in a loose sense.
Strictly speaking, of course, metabolism, growth and reproduction
are temporal processes, yet given that a certain being has these
capacities, it belongs to a species of living beings in the
nontemporal (or not exclusively present) tense of to belong,
unlike, for example, stones and minerals. On a temporal view,
however, one individual is followed from its coming into
existence, during its lifetime and until its death. Life
then means something like period of existence of a living
individual. Variants of this meaning are period between birth
and death and the sequence of physical and/or mental experiences
which make up the existence of an individual. In the temporal
sense of living a living being need not be
able to reproduce or multiply at all in order to be a living
being, nor does it need to grow in the sense of getting taller
or larger.
While the boundary between nontemporal life and death,
that is, between living beings and dead things, is not sharp
from an empirical-linguistic or lexical standpoint, the boundary
between temporal life and death, that is, between an
individual which is still living and an individual which has
died, is not that sharp either. Some say that human beings in
irreversible coma should be regarded as already dead. A patient
may thus be declared "dead" if
'er brain has not been
functioning for at least twenty-four hours (the body showing no response
to stimuli, no general movements, no reflexes and an isoelectric
electroencephalogram). The heart may then still beat spontaneously
without the aid of a machine, something that is reason
enough for others to call such a human being "still alive".
Instead of irreversible loss of all electrical activity in the
brain, irreversible loss of consciousness may also be held as a
criterion of death. It has been said that death should be
defined in terms of this absence of consciousness, since it would
be from this alone that interest in the electrical activity
derives. On the so-called 'double-test view' it is necessary
that not only all respiratory and circulatory activities have
stopped, but that the brain, too, is so badly damaged that the loss of
consciousness has become irreversible. This should guarantee
that both the person and the body
'e had are dead. For a
person may need a living body, a living body certainly does
not need a person.
What is important when choosing a definition or criterion is
the consistence with which such a definition or criterion is
applied: if the absence of all electrical activity in the brain
is a criterion at the end of one's existence, it is also a
criterion at the beginning of one's existence (here as a fetus
of which the brain waves can already be monitored). As regards
life in a nontemporal sense: if a spontaneous beating heart, or
consciousness, were a prerequisite for being called "(still)
living", beings which have no heart, or which are not conscious,
would not be living beings. This would exclude plants, if not
many animals as well, unless life and living are used in
two different senses. What is also important is that the definition
of what is 'life' or 'living' does not conceptually depend on
some principle of life, or on any idea about the value or
disvalue of life or nonlife. It is one thing to say that a
person or 'er body is dead and quite another to say that 'er or
its life is not worth preserving anymore.
Nonlife and death are the or a negation of life
and as such privative concepts. What characterizes a nonliving or dead
thing or body is the absence of any response to stimuli,
metabolism, growth, reproduction and the capacity to move by itself,
altho
the absence of only one of these features is not
enough per se to call a thing or body "nonliving" or "dead". As
the negation of nontemporal life dead means nonliving
(in a nontemporal sense), while as a negation of temporal life it
means having died or not living anymore. Temporal death is
only part of temporal nonlife, the negation of temporal life,
because this negation also covers the period of preexistence,
that is, the period before a living being came into existence.
Furthermore, it also covers eternal nonexistence. (To define the
temporal dead as not living as some dictionaries do, is
therefore erroneous, when it means having died.) It is
preexistence, life and death together which extend over the whole
dimension of time. (Preexistence is not used here in the
sense of eternal existence of the soul or person before the
coming into being of 'er body, in which case not preexistence
and death are complementary notions but preexistence and
immortality.)
Neither temporal life and death nor nontemporal life
and death are
catenical concepts, even tho
temporal life and death belong to a series of three concepts.
Preexistence and death are not opposites, nor are life
and death. Moreover, life, death and
preexistence are not concepts which admit of degrees, or which do
not admit of degrees while limiting concepts which do. (Altho it has been
argued that life diminishes by degrees in a scale descending to death, it
has never been pointed out what would be the unique
catena or dimension
involved.)
The temporal transition from life to nonlife or death is
called "dying". Dying is to pass out of existence, that is, to
pass from life in the case of living beings. When this transition
is caused by a particular agency, people speak of "killing".
What this agency is, may vary from a virus to a person,
but in a moral context it is obviously the question of persons
killing living beings which is the focus of attention. It is not
so obvious tho, whether the difference between causing the
death of a living being and risking or allowing the death
of such a being is of any moral significance. We must not delude
ourselves into thinking that it is only killing which counts,
and not risking or allowing death, or letting something or
someone die. The fact that there is only a special word for
causing death in the present language, and not for risking or
allowing death, is merely a
propositional
fact with no bearing on the
ground-facts. Similarly, it is
only a propositional fact that there are no special words in the present
language for causing, risking or allowing something to remain in a
preexistent or potential state, but also here we must ask what the
implications are of the difference between remaining in a
preexistent state and having died; and what they are not.
Unlike killing, which refers to the mere fact of death
caused by an agency in any manner, murder is said to imply
full moral responsibility. Murder is not just a kind of killing
which is bad, it is a kind of bad killing which is also intended
and therefore wrong. When it is claimed that murder implies
'motive', it is intention which is meant, for people also speak
of 'murder' when the motive is not someone's death but, for
example, someone's valuables when these could only be obtained by
killing the person in question. Such a motive is then probably a
personal motive, but it can also be an impersonal one, while the
killing itself remains deliberate. In such a case people tend to
speak of "assassination". However, a political or military
authority carrying out a death sentence would rather call it "an
execution". It is precisely because murder has an inherent
wrongness, and because 'everyone' is against murder, that people
will employ every expression but the expression murder to
describe their own deeds or those of their comrades. Only by seeing
thru
the emptiness and inconsistence of this verbalism
can the plot of those playing this game of words be exposed.
The substantive matters of life and death are just too serious to
remain hidden behind emotive meanings and nebulous notions.
