Consciousness and the culture wars, part 2

After years at a slow burn, the controversy over Terri Schiavo has hit the national news. Schiavo lost consciousness in 1990 after a cardiac arrest, and her husband recently won a lawsuit to have her feeding tube removed, over the objection of her family. Then on Tuesday, Governor Jeb Bush ordered that her tube be reattached, using powers given to him by the Florida legislature the day before. If ever there was an argument for a living will, the Schiavo case is one. She supposedly told her husband she wouldn't want to be kept alive artificially, but never wrote anything down. If she had, the decision to give or withdraw care might have been a simple one. Instead, her husband and her family--and the country by proxy now--is in a muddled shouting match over life, death, the right to die, consciousness, and the soul. There are several separate debates here, ...