The question of what "personhood" is, is one of the more difficult, and more central questions raised by many of today's ethical dilemmas. Obviously, it is at the center of the abortion debate, and as the Terri Schiavo case has made clear, it is also the primary question raised by the definitions of "life" and "death." For better or worse, this is a question that medicine and science cannot answer for us. This means that we have to come up with definitions which, while they may be based on empirical facts, also include interpretations of those facts that are not strictly scientific. In a previous post, I stated unequivocally that I believe that cases of obvious higher-brain death (i.e., when it is physically impossible for a person to ever have any higher-brain functioning again), there is no reason to use the modifier "higher-brain." The "person" is simply "dead." ...

An individual human person is differentiated from other human individuals, as well as nonhuman individuals, by a collection of memories, beliefs, knowledge, skills, and tendencies. In other words, what defines an individual person is a history. That history is, by and large, contained in the cerebral cortex and surrounding brain areas, along with the cerebellum.

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