TY - JOUR
T1 - More Dead than Dead?: Attributing Mentality to Vegetative State Patients
AU - Gomes, Anil
AU - Parrott, Matthew
AU - Shepherd, Joshua
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner (2011) present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott ( Gomes, A., & Parrott, M. (forthcoming). Epicurean aspects of mental state attributions. Philosophical Psychology.[Google Scholar]), 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.
AB - In a recent paper, Gray, Knickman, and Wegner (2011) present three experiments which they take to show that people perceive patients in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) to have less mentality than the dead. Following on from Gomes and Parrott ( Gomes, A., & Parrott, M. (forthcoming). Epicurean aspects of mental state attributions. Philosophical Psychology.[Google Scholar]), 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.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84955690169
U2 - 10.1080/09515089.2015.1048328
DO - 10.1080/09515089.2015.1048328
M3 - Article
SN - 0951-5089
VL - 29
SP - 84
EP - 95
JO - Philosophical Psychology
JF - Philosophical Psychology
IS - 1
ER -