Dilemma: A Life in Coma

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Melinda and Melissa are faced with a difficult decision. Matthews the two sisters brother, are faced with a situation after Matthew becomes comatose due to an accident that destroys eighty percent of his brain. Melissa and Melinda are supposed to give the final decision as to whether to turn off the life support, or to allow him to live off of a machine (Laurents, 2016). Unfortunately, Melissa and Melinda do not have the same opinions as to what life is. Melissa, on one hand, believes that the brain of a person makes the person who they are. Now Matthew’s brain is almost gone and the doctors say he will never wake up on his own. Melissa says that their brother Matthew is gone. Melinda, on the other hand, believes that a person has a soul and the soul is linked to the body. She believes that if they keep their brother alive then his soul will still be there but if they unplug the life support …show more content…

The mind which is a non-extended thing, thinking is very different from the body which is a non-thinking thing, an extended and therefore Descartes argues that it is possible for the body to function without the mind and the mind to function without the body (Sorabji, 72). In Descartes theory of mind-body dualism, there exist several theories. Descartes describes the real distinction as the distinction between two things or substances. A substance is something that does not require any other creature to exist since it can occur with God’s concurrence only. Mode, on the other hand, is the affection towards a particular substance. Descartes argues that there are two payoffs for arguing that the mind and body can exist without each other. This includes the religious motivation and provides hope for the immortality of the soul and the second one is the scientific motivation that paves way for the new version of Descartes mechanistic

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