Unconsciousness

Abstract

Neuroscientific knowledge about disorders of consciousness has rapidly developed in recent decades, expanding the diagnostic categories. This chapter describes the disorders and what is known about them and traces their medical and ethical history, examining how old and dogmatic certainties have given way to new and urgent uncertainties. Bioethical and philosophical discourses have not adequately kept pace with what is known and unknown about these disorders. It is argued that there is a need to reconsider outdated ethical conclusions and to revise the taxonomy of these orders, both to excise stigmatizing terms like vegetative, to more accurately reflect the changing and mercurial clinical picture, and to knock down the monoliths of conscious and unconscious.