Depending on our mode of reasoning—moral, prudential, instrumental, empirical, dialectical, and so on—we may come to vastly different conclusions on the nature of death and the appropriate orientation toward matters such as euthanasia or procuring organs from brain-dead patients. These differing orientations have resulted in some of the most enduring conflicts in biomedical decision-making with roots in the earliest strands of philosophical discourse. Through continually grappling with questions over matters of death, we continually step closer to clarity, even if certainty (...) on these matters remains necessarily as elusive as death itself. (shrink)