I’ve had nothing to say about the Terri Schiavo case, because I don’t know that much about it. But all of the major media, including The Corner, seem determined to rectify that situation. Or rather, they seek to inundate me with information about it, if not enlightenment.

I guess it’s understandable why it’s become such a compelling story–it’s a heady mix of themes both political and philosophical. We have the nature of marriage, the fidelity of a spouse to both his marriage and to what he claims are his wife’s desires, the importance of documenting those desires prior to such an event (though one can never truly know what one’s feelings will be when it actually happens), the appropriate role of the states, the federal government, and the judiciary in deciding such personal and heart-wrenching situations, the definition of “persistent vegetative state” and the uncertainties of how to determine whether it truly persists in a particular individual, the absurd hypocrisy of allowing execution without trial by passive (but not active, even though they actually are) acts, the right to live, the right to die, the value of a life bereft of cognition, even (though this is one that few talk about) whether or not such a life can even be considered fully human, and the ultimate prospects for recovery from such a condition.

I’ll ignore the politics and legal issues, which will clear out quite a bit of the underbrush. I’ll also ignore all of the speculation as to the husband’s motives and character, about which I know little, and actually care less, at least for the purpose of this discussion.

I’d like instead to delve more deeply into what I think has been ignored–the philosophical and ethical issues involved.

Is this euthanasia? It depends on how one defines it. Obviously, the courts want to rule that it isn’t because it’s against the law, but what is the ethical difference between withdrawing food and water from a forty-one year old unable to feed herself, and a one-month-old unable to feed herself? (I’ll ignore for now the ethical absurdity of it being acceptable to starve and dehydrate someone to death, when that is a certain outcome of one’s actions, but not to painlessly euthanize them.)

It’s clearly not the age, because someone who was invalid and requesting food and water would be provided it in our society, or those who failed to do so would be charged with criminal neglect, and this would be true for a person of nine months or ninety years. It can only be the potential for humanity and a life that others would consider to be of “value.” A baby has a full, cognizant, sapient life ahead of it, whereas the presumption in this case is that Mrs. Schiavo apparently does not.

We are told by numerous experts (with a few dissenters) that she has no cognitive function, or awareness of either her surroundings or her own existence. I have to wonder how they can know this.

Awareness of surroundings is easy enough to identify. Assuming that their sensory apparatus–eyes, ears, skin–are functional, one can move objects to see if they follow them with their eyes, or make noises to see if they turn at the sudden sensory input. Of course, any household pet (other than a pet rock) would pass this test. So surely that can’t be a test, in and of itself, either. We have granted a special privilege to creatures that share our DNA structure, though in the future, as such things become ever more manipulable, the use of DNA as a definer of humanity will come to be seen as inadequate in the face of those things that truly make us human–our cognitive abilities, our emotions, our loves and fears, our laughter and tears. I don’t know to what degree Terri Schiavo still retains those features, which are what I consider essential to being a human.

But more fundamentally, is she conscious? In an ultimate philosophical sense, how can one judge that for anyone, let alone for someone with whom we are unable to communicate on even the most basic level (again, assuming that to be the case, a matter which seems also to be in some dispute).

Years ago, the famous (well, among mathematicians and computer types, anyway) pioneer of computing theory, Alan Turing, came up with something called the Turing Test. It recognizes that there’s no way to know with ultimate certainty that someone is conscious or self aware–we can only know that about ourselves–but that we make the assumption with what appear to be our fellow humans that if someone acts like they are, then they are. So the question arises, if we were to develop a machine that behaves like, indeed is indistinguishable from, a human in terms of its responses to questions, and in conversation, in what sense can we say it’s not conscious as well? Other, that is, than to arbitrarily (and, though I hesitate to use the term, considering that its source is Peter Singer, in a “speciesist” way) define things that are inorganic and lacking human DNA as being intrinsically incapable of consciousness?

So, is Terri Schiavo conscious? Well, she certainly seems to fail a Turing Test. But suppose (and this, of course, is the most horrifying possibility), to turn the old insult on its head, the lights aren’t on–the shades are for the most part drawn–but somebody is home. Suppose that she’s fully aware of her existence, in all its pain and frustration, and is physically unable to communicate that fact to us.

It seems to me that there are two possibilities (recognizing gradations between them).

The first possibility is that there is, in fact, someone home. If so, then the state of her mind is important. If she wants to live, despite her husband’s testimony, then it would seem important to let her do so, and hopefully, few would disagree–even her husband. This is in fact her family’s (with the exception of her husband) belief.

If she wants to die, perhaps because she’s in indescribable pain, or simply from the frustration of being trapped helplessly in her body with no prospect for escape, then of course it’s more complicated.

After all, the people who are trying to keep her alive now (and I’m not referring only to her family) would, for the most part, still be doing so even if she were expressing her desire to end her life, since for the most part they find euthanasia morally repugnant (perhaps even if it meant to consign her indefinitely to a living hell). I don’t think that they would do so because they are cruel people, but because they do seem (often irrationally) to value anything that resembles human life above all else, and they can’t personally know what hell they’re putting her through, any more than they can know with certainty as to whether or not she’s conscious.

On the other hand, many (like, for instance, me) believe that the desires of the individual in this, perhaps the most personal decision possible, should prevail, if she’s an adult. So unlike them, if I knew with certainty that Terri Schiavo wanted to end her existence, I would not only allow her to do so, but I’d help her do so as quickly and painlessly as possible, particularly given how long she’s been in this frustrating state.

The second possibility is the one that the courts have ruled to date is in fact the case–that she is completely uncognizant of herself or anything else–a “vegetable,” albeit one composed almost entirely of protein, with few carbs. There are in turn two possibilities attached to this one. First, that this is a permanent state, irreversible. Again, this is the current position of the courts. The second, though, is that given either time, or technology (a possibility that I’ve heard no discussion of to date), she will at least improve, if not be talking and running and laughing again.

If we can know, with absolute certainty, that she is vegetative, and that it’s persistent, then I have no problem with pulling the feeding tube, other than in fact that’s a needlessly long way to go about the process of ending this (what I would consider) non-human life. In fact, it seems to me that, if there really is no one home, it doesn’t matter in what manner we do so, from an ethical standpoint, other than the standpoint of human decency. We could chop off her head, bury her alive, put her through a wood chipper, leave her in the woods to let the animals feed upon her, etc. All of these would be outrages to her family and loved ones, of course (hopefully including even her maligned husband), which is why we would do none of them, but it certainly wouldn’t matter to her. The point is, that we could euthanize her, and not play this bizarre philosophical game of pretending that we’re not really killing her by denying her food and water–that her “dying process is continuing,” as though it’s something passive, with which those who (actively) removed her feeding tube have nothing to do.

But the second possibility is the one that I find most interesting, for the purposes of this (by now) long discussion.

Suppose that she is in a vegetative state, but that it can be repaired in the future, with technology not yet in existence, or perhaps currently imagined, even if she won’t heal from it naturally, on her own. Those long familiar with my weblog will know where I’m going with this.

What Terri Schiavo’s family is doing is asking to give her an ambulance to the future, whatever that future may hold. They want to keep her alive for the simple aphorism that where there is life, there is hope. They considered her to be in that ambulance, no matter how clunky with current medical knowledge (and perhaps given her husband’s orders, for good or ill), while on the feeding tube. To remove it now is to open the back doors, and kick the patient out in the street to die, bereft of any more hope for the future.

Terri Schiavo may in fact be already dead, by the definition of cryonicists, because if her brain is as damaged as some claim, anything resembling her, in terms of personality and memories, is long gone, with no hope for return. She has suffered the ultimate, irretrievable death–information death. Even if medical technology improves in the future to repair her mind, they might restore someone to full health, who physically resembles Terri Schiavo, or Terri Schindler, but it will be a different person, with different memories, and perhaps a completely different nature. It’s someone who Terri’s friends and family may get to know, and come to like and even love, but it won’t be Terri, and never will be Terri, no matter how strong the resemblance.

Cryonics patients, on the other hand, are trying to preserve what (if the pessimists about Terri are right) she has already lost beyond recovery. They want to preserve their memories and personality currently residing in their intact minds. Their bodies (and the number of chromosomes in their DNA) are of secondary importance (though to many, still important). A human brain frozen today cannot be repaired today, but we cannot say what the morrow brings.

So from that standpoint, if Terri is as non compos mentis as the courts have ruled (again, a premise granted only for the sake of this discussion), then patients in cryonic suspension, particularly those put there more recently, under better, cell-preserving protocols, are more alive than Terri Schiavo is, even though she breathes, and needs a feeding tube, and they have no metabolism at all.

This, of course, has been a long-winded way of saying that I don’t ultimately know what to do about Terri, because I don’t know if (by my lights) she’s alive or dead. If she’s alive, and wants to remain so, she should. If she’s alive and wants to die, she should be able to do that. If she’s dead, then it doesn’t matter. It’s a hard case, and as the old saying goes, hard cases make bad law, which is why what’s going on in Washington is also troubling.

What truly concerns me about this case, though, and ultimately puts me on the side of the family, is that I’ve seen how the courts have dealt with the rights of innocent people (cryonicists) desperate to save themselves, but who have callously been granted the equivalent of a death sentence. Sadly, courts cannot always be trusted in such matters, because judges cannot always be trusted to be scientifically literate or even amenable to simple logic. I’m concerned that Terri Schiavo hasn’t gotten her day in court, or that if she did, it was a bad one, and I think that she should get one more bite at the apple, if there’s any possibility at all that she has the teeth for it. Let’s make sure she’s really dead before we throw her off the ambulance.