Between Buddhism and Biomedicine: Absence as Positivity in End of Life Assessment

• In Event: Diagnosing Death: Critical STS Perspectives - II

Abstract

Broadly speaking, technologically assisted assessments of life and its maintenance are often seen to be synonymous with the reduction of the body to a mere biological mechanism, inimical to culturally ordained conceptions of life and identity necessary to bestow meaning and dignity. In the search for epistemic alternatives, the Tibetan Buddhist view of the of the body as an aggregated vehicle supporting one aspect of mind or consciousness offers a view which some researchers perceive as being consonant with the mechanistic view of consciousness and identity while simultaneously providing a language and worldview which sidesteps the reductive tendencies seeming inseparable from mechanistic accounts. Through the lens of an ongoing research project in India which employs EEG and other psychophysiological assessment technologies to investigate the nature of death and dying, I explore the ways in which the absence of certain kinds of machine feedback are epistemically configured by biomedical and Tibetan Buddhist stakeholders. This presentation will also explore the role of study devices and outputs in the network of actors and institutions constituted through the analysis, information, and transportation systems that comprise such research.

Author

• Dylan Thomas Lott, Center for Healthy Minds/University of Wisconsin-Madison