Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

IS THE BRAIN-DEAD PATIENT REALLY DEAD? 301talks about the organic life of an extracted kidney that is aliveoutside the donor’s body. He argues that this organic life mustarise from the presence of a subhuman soul that animates thekidney. In this, Furton is again correct. However, again, what isthe mediating part in the kidney, the analog to the brain in thecomplete body, that allows it to be ensouled? Again, none isapparent. These two examples taken from Furton’s own workdemonstrate that he presumes that there is no need for any onepart of a living whole to mediate the union of the soul to subhumanorganic life. But if there is no need for a part to mediate theunion of the soul and the matter either in the BD patient’s bodyor in the extracted kidney, then why the need for one, the brain,in the intact human being?I submit that Furton’s presupposition that an organ is neededto unite the body and soul is mistaken and that it is mistakenfor two reasons. First, as my colleagues and I have argued elsewhere,the presupposition that an organ of integration or mediationmust exist in every organic being to unify the body and thesoul is a presupposition based upon a flawed understanding ofthe hierarchical constitution of living organisms that cannotaccount for all the empirical evidence. 66 Briefly, this flawed viewconceives of organic life as hierarchical where one part, the masterpart, necessarily exists to integrate and govern the whole.However, there are many forms of organic life – for example,plants, flatworms, mammalian embryos, and in light ofShewmon’s work, the adult human being – that are not organizedhierarchically. 67 They do not have a central integrating66N. AUSTRIACO, OP, B. COLE, OP, and William E. MAY, “Reply to Fr.Ashley,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 1 (2001): 9-11.67For instance, experimental work has shown that no single cell orgroup of cells in the early mammalian embryo before the blastocyst stagehas primacy over the other cells. No cell or group of cells is indispensable forthe continued development of the embryo. Rather, the development of eachcell is specified by the interactions among all the cells. Thus, if there is a primaryorgan responsible for tethering the human soul to the embryo, biologistscannot find it. This is probably the case because mammalian embryosare characterized by conditional specification of the cells where cell identityis determined primarily by the interactions among the cells rather than by