More dead than dead? Attributing mentality to vegetative state patients

Philosophical Psychology 29 (1):84-95 (2016)
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Abstract

In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott, we provide evidence to show that participants' responses in the initial experiments are an artifact of the questions posed. Results from two experiments show that, once the questions have been clarified, people do not ascribe more mental capacity to the dead than to PVS patients. There is no reason to think that people perceive PVS patients as more dead than dead.

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Author Profiles

Joshua Shepherd
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Matthew Parrott
King's College London
Anil Gomes
University of Oxford

References found in this work

Fiction as a Genre.Stacie Friend - 2012 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (2pt2):179--209.
Brain damage and the moral significance of consciousness.Julian Savulescu - 2009 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (1):6-26.
The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness.Nicholas Shea & Tim Bayne - 2010 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (3):459-484.

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