The coma (Greek κῶμα, “deep sleep”) is a state of deep unconsciousness in which the person performs no spiritual acts — no cognizing, no willing, no conscious experience. It is precisely for this reason that the coma is a touchstone for every concept of the person.
The Problem of the Empirical-Functionalist Concept of Person
The empirical-functionalist concept of person ties personhood to the actual exercise of certain capacities — in particular to self-consciousness, rationality, and interests in the future. A human being in a coma exercises none of these capacities. Thought through consistently, such a person would not be a person at all. This is the core of the exclusion objection: the functionalist concept of person excludes from personhood human beings whom we recognize as persons.
The Substance-Ontological Answer
Substance personalism Substanzpersonalismus can explain why the human being in a coma remains the same person. Personhood lies not in the second actuality (the actual performances), but in the first actuality (the substantial being of the person). The comatose human being performs no spiritual acts, but he is the being that, according to its essential form, is capable of such acts. The principle agere sequitur esse holds here too: acting follows being, not the other way around. Whoever sees the acting fall away must not infer the absence of being.
The dignity of the person in a coma therefore remains fully preserved. What is restricted is solely the actual exercise of function under certain conditions — not personhood itself. The same applies to sleep, to dementia, and to anaesthesia: in all these states the person remains the person she is.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Translated by Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, esp. ch. 11 (unconsciousness and personhood).
- Singer, Peter: Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 4—5 (opposing position: personhood as a function of consciousness).