[My argument] has revealed the total absence of any compelling philosophical or scientific reason to interpret brain-mediated somatic integration as constitutive of the human organism; all the evidence is compatible with, indeed, positively suggests, the conclusion that brainmediated somatic integration maintains the organism’s health or promotes its survival, but does not constitute it as a living whole in the first place. By the same token, there is absolutely no compelling philosophical or scientific reason to suppose that brain death, however total and irreversible, is ipso facto the death of a human being as such . . .

[The] accusation that I am in conflict with Church teaching about death relies . . . not only on a mischaracterization of my position, but also on a mischaracterization of Church teaching itself. In point of fact, the Magisterium does not formally oblige us to hold that the brain is the master organ of somatic integration, or that its death is therefore the death of the human being as such. Nor does the hylemorphism espoused by Boethius, Aquinas, and the Council of Vienne entail any such claim.

1. Introduction

In “You Only Die Twice,”² bioethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini seeks to draw a line in the sand against the rising tide of what he calls the “mentalist view” of death,³ which “argues in effect that when a human being ceases to be able to function at those higher levels of activity that we consider human or even sentient life, then the person has died even if the body continues to function.”⁴ As an alternative to mentalism, Tonti-Filippini defends a mainstream integrationist version of brain death as the criterion for determining when a human organism has died. Since, Tonti-Filippini argues, bodily integration is mediated by the endocrine and nervous systems, and since both depend on brain function, total irreversible loss of brain function eo ipso results in loss of bodily integration and, therefore, in the death of the human organism: The brain is “essential for integration of the body and without it the parts of the body cease to be an integrated whole.”⁵

Tonti-Filippini regards the integrationist account of brain death as the centerpiece of an empirically airtight case against mentalism, but he also insists on its compatibility with Church teaching, in particular with that of “the Council of Vienne, which, following Boethius and Aquinas, adopted the notion of the unity of the human person with the soul as the substantial form of the body.”⁶ Indeed, Tonti-Filippini even goes so far as to suggest that in recent times the account of brain death that he favors has been endorsed by the Church’s Magisterium in the person of Pope John Paul II.⁷

For Tonti-Filippini, then, the mainstream account of brain death is a godsend to loyal Catholic bioethicists, a weapon against mentalism that is at once empirically unassailable and philosophically-theologically orthodox. By the same token, he considers my theoretical and empirical challenge to mainstream thinking about brain death to be unsound scientifically and out of keeping with Church teaching, which in Tonti-Filippini’s view is committed to the proposition that total irreversible loss of brain function is (a sure sign of) the death of a human being.

For Tonti-Filippini, then, the mainstream account of brain death is a godsend to loyal Catholic bioethicists, a weapon against mentalism that is at once empirically unassailable and philosophically-theologically orthodox. By the same token, he considers my theoretical and empirical challenge to mainstream thinking about brain death to be unsound scientifically and out of keeping with Church teaching, which in Tonti-Filippini’s view is committed to the proposition that total irreversible loss of brain function is (a sure sign of) the death of a human being.

In what follows, I will argue that Tonti-Filippini’s critique of my position is wrong on both counts: Neither the empirical evidence nor Church teaching requires us to hold that the brain is “essential” for organismic somatic integration, or that the brain’s death is automatically the death of a human being. My aim, however, is not simply to refute Tonti-Filippini’s charges against me, but also to show that the integrationist account of brain death is not at all the empirically sound, theologically-philosophically orthodox godsend that he asserts.

In the next section of the paper (II. Brain Death: Sharpening the Question), I propose to work out a philosophical framework for understanding somatic integration and the role the brain plays in it. The following section (III. A Bold Assertion) will then apply this framework to the available empirical evidence, all of which suggests that the integration accomplished by the brain, rather than constituting the human organism, only maintains its health or promotes its survival. Having presented my case against the somatic integration rationale for the brain death criterion, I will conclude (IV. Conclusion: What Does the Church Really Teach?) by rebutting Tonti-Filippini’s charge that my position deviates from Catholic orthodoxy, which does not in fact declare brain death to be death, end of story. Tonti-Filippini’s attempt to wrap himself in the mantle of Catholic doctrine reveals more about his own flawed hermeneutic of the Magisterium than it does about the actual substance of the magisterial statements he invokes.

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