Abstract

This study introduces a new conceptual model of death that repositions it as an ontologically primary state—one that occurs before and initiates the biological processes traditionally associated with dying. Challenging the conventional linear sequence of life → dying → death, the paper argues that death should not be defined by clinical signs such as cardiac arrest or brain inactivity, but as a metaphysical rupture in systemic coherence. Through an interdisciplinary methodology combining philosophical analysis, metaphysical modeling, medical ethics, and systems theory, the paper presents two core frameworks: the Ontological Priority Thesis, which proposes that metaphysical death precedes biological failure; and the Magnetism of Death Hypothesis, which posits that death can propagate inductively across individuals in collective fatal events, akin to magnetic or neural field effects. The study also explores anomalous cases—such as wood, calloused skin, and blood products—that retain systemic function despite localized biological death. These examples support a model of distributed metaphysical vitality dependent on coherence rather than cellular life. Key implications include the need to reassess clinical death markers, revise ethical protocols for end-of-life care and organ donation, and expand philosophical accounts of personhood and consciousness. By rethinking death as a structural inversion of life, this model opens new pathways for research in medicine, metaphysics, and bioethics.

Keywords

Death ModelsDying ProcessEnd-of-Life PhilosophyMedical EthicsMetaphysical VitalityOntological Death

References

  1. [1] Rastegorac, V.V., 2017. Interpretation of poetry for children as an opportunity for death education: The whys and the hows. Teaching Innovations. 30(3), 82–93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/inovacije1703082v
  2. [2] Beláustegui, G.D., 2010. Phenomenology of the Transcendence of Space-time Coordinates. Jung Journal. 4(2), 85–89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jung.2010.4.2.85
  3. [3] Azevedo, M.A., Othero, J., 2020. Human death as a triptych process. Mortality. 25(4), 490–504. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2020.1756765
  4. [4] Parsons, T., 1963. Death in American Society – a Brief Working Paper. American Behavioral Scientist. 6(9), 61–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/000276426300600918
  5. [5] Nolan, C., 2020. The Metaphysical Irreversibility of Death. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine. 45(6), 725–741. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhaa024
  6. [6] Rodabough, T., 1980. Alternatives to the stages model of the dying process. Death Education. 4(1), 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07481188008253345
  7. [7] Charpier, S., 2023. Between life and death: the brain twilight zones. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 17, 1156368. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1156368
  8. [8] Verheijde, J.L., Rady, M.Y., McGregor, J., 2009. Brain death, states of impaired consciousness, and physician-assisted death for end-of-life organ donation and transplantation. Medicine Health Care and Philosophy. 12(4), 409–421. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-009-9204-0
  9. [9] Lavin, M., 1985. How not to define death: some objections to cognitive approaches. The Southern Journal of Philosophy. 23(3), 313–324. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1985.tb00401.x
  10. [10] Gaille, M., Rera, M., Araneda, M., et al., 2020. Ethical and social implications of approaching death prediction in humans - when the biology of ageing meets existential issues. BMC Medical Ethics. 21(1), 64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020-00502-5
  11. [11] Lizza, J.P., 2025. A Prescriptive Metaphysics of Death. The Hastings Center Report. 55(1), 33–46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.4959
  12. [12] Koestenbaum, P., 1972. The Vitality of Death. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying. 2(4), 253–271. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2190/bxmu-81hf-fvll-0mgq
  13. [13] Bowers, M.K., Feifel, H., 1962. The Meaning of Death. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 1(2), 237–238. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1384713
  14. [14] Wu, M.M.F., 2020. Death education from an Hegelian perspective. Death Studies. 46(1), 100–110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2020.1716885
  15. [15] Gire, J.T., 2014. How Death Imitates Life: Cultural Influences on Conceptions of Death and Dying. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture. 6(2), 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1120
  16. [16] Lawrence, A.L., Jones, M.T., Boles, J., 2022. Helping Children Cope with Loss: Legacy Interventions for the Grieving Classroom. Continuity in Education. 3(1), 92. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/cie.45
  17. [17] Testoni, I., Ronconi, L., Palazzo, L., et al., 2018. Psychodrama and Moviemaking in a Death Education Course to Work Through a Case of Suicide Among High School Students in Italy. Frontiers in Psychology. 9, 441. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00441
  18. [18] Monaro, S., West, S., Gullick, J., 2020. Chronic limb-threatening ischaemia and reframing the meaning of 'end'. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 30(5–6), 687–700. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15591
  19. [19] Sun, S., 2020. Analysis on the Fear When Facing Death. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mental Health and Humanities Education (ICMHHE 2020), Wuhan, China, 27–29 March 2020; pp. 1–4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200425.001
  20. [20] Setta, S.M., Shemie, S.D., 2015. An explanation and analysis of how world religions formulate their ethical decisions on withdrawing treatment and determining death. Philosophy Ethics and Humanities in Medicine. 10(1), 6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13010-015-0025-x
  21. [21] Blank, R.H., 2011. End-of-Life Decision Making across Cultures. The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics. 39(2), 201–214. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-720x.2011.00589.x
  22. [22] Allahdadian, M., Irajpour, A., 2015. The role of religious beliefs in pregnancy loss. Journal of Education and Health Promotion. 4(1), 99. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4103/2277-9531.171813
  23. [23] Kiiru, M., 2014. Going Gentle into that Good Night: Indigenous Therapy on Death in Kenya. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 114, 298–310. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.12.702
  24. [24] Steinberg, S., 2011. Cultural and religious aspects of palliative care. International Journal of Critical Illness and Injury Science. 1(2), 154–156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4103/2229-5151.84804
  25. [25] Nia, H.S., Lehto, R.H., Ebadi, A., et al., 2016. Death Anxiety among Nurses and Health Care Professionals: A Review Article. DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals. 4(1), 2.
  26. [26] Ohr, S., Jeong, S., Saul, P., 2016. Cultural and religious beliefs and values, and their impact on preferences for end-of-life care among four ethnic groups of community-dwelling older persons. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 26(11–12), 1681–1689. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.13572
  27. [27] Kennedy, M., 2015. Interpreting postmortem drug analysis and redistribution in determining cause of death: a review. Pathology and Laboratory Medicine International. 7, 55–62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2147/plmi.s65245
  28. [28] Kroemer, G., El-Deiry, W.S., Golstein, P., et al., 2005. Classification of cell death: recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death. Cell Death and Differentiation. 12, 1463–1467. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.cdd.4401724
  29. [29] Galluzzi, L., Maiuri, M.C., Vitale, I., et al., 2007. Cell death modalities: classification and pathophysiological implications. Cell Death and Differentiation. 14(7), 1237–1243. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.cdd.4402148
  30. [30] Sheets-Johnstone, M., 2015. The Enigma of Being-Toward-Death. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 29(4), 547–576. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.29.4.0547
  31. [31] Meier, E.A., Gallegos, J.V., Thomas, L.P.M., et al., 2016. Defining a Good Death (Successful Dying): Literature Review and a Call for Research and Public Dialogue. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 24(4), 261–271. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2016.01.135
  32. [32] Voléry, I., Toupet, L., 2021. Orchestrating death in contemporary France: When the juridico-medical scansion at the end of life produces new ontologies. Death Studies. 46(7), 1569–1582. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2021.1926633
  33. [33] Evans, M., 1990. A Plea for the Heart. Bioethics. 4(3), 227–231. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.1990.tb00085.x
  34. [34] Miller, F.G., 2009. Death and organ donation: back to the future. Journal of Medical Ethics. 35(10), 616–620. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2009.030627
  35. [35] Nair-Collins, M., 2022. Expanding the Social Status of "Corpse" to the Severely Comatose: Henry Beecher and the Harvard Brain Death Committee. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 65(1), 41–58. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2022.0002
  36. [36] Rolston, H., 1982. The Irreversibly Comatose: Respect for the Subhuman in Human Life. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine. 7(4), 337–354. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/7.4.337
  37. [37] Kanduc, D., Mittelman, A., Serpico, R., et al., 2002. Cell death: Apoptosis versus necrosis (Review). International Journal of Oncology. 21(1), 165–170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3892/ijo.21.1.165
  38. [38] Smith, B., Smith, B.D., 2012. Biomarkers and Molecular Probes for Cell Death Imaging and Targeted Therapeutics. Bioconjugate Chemistry. 23(10), 1989–2006. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/bc3003309
  39. [39] Guy, P., Holloway, M., 2007. Drug-related Deaths and the 'Special Deaths' of Late Modernity. Sociology. 41(1), 83–96. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507074717
  40. [40] Li, K., Wu, D., Chen, X., et al., 2014. Current and Emerging Biomarkers of Cell Death in Human Disease. BioMed Research International. 2014(1), 690103. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/690103
  41. [41] Erhardt, C.L., 1958. What is "the cause of death"? Journal of the American Medical Association. 168(2), 161–168. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1958.03000020023005
  42. [42] Ngene, N.C., Moodley, J., 2015. Assigning appropriate primary cause of death and indication for medical procedures. Medical Hypotheses. 85(1), 79–81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2015.04.002
  43. [43] Naghavi, M., Makela, S., Foreman, K.J., et al., 2010. Algorithms for enhancing public health utility of national causes-of-death data. Population Health Metrics. 8(1), 9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-7954-8-9
  44. [44] Brooks, E.G., Reed, K.D., 2015. Principles and Pitfalls: a Guide to Death Certification. Clinical Medicine & Research. 13(2), 74–82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3121/cmr.2015.1276
  45. [45] Zhang, D., Gao, M., Jin, Q., et al., 2019. Updated developments on molecular imaging and therapeutic strategies directed against necrosis. Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B. 9(3), 455–468. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsb.2019.02.002
  46. [46] Stoess, C., Choi, Y., Onyuru, J., et al., 2024. Cell Death in Liver Disease and Liver Surgery. Biomedicines. 12(3), 559. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines12030559
  47. [47] Gong, Y., Crawford, J.C., Heckmann, B.L., et al., 2018. To the edge of cell death and back. FEBS Journal. 286(3), 430–440. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/febs.14714
  48. [48] Wallace, J., Odom, W., Montague, K., et al., 2020. HCI at End of Life & Beyond. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Honolulu, HI, USA, 25–30 April 2020; pp. 1–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3375143
  49. [49] Long, A., 2019. Death and Immortality in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316091562
  50. [50] Ayalon, L., 2003. Providing Care in the End of Life. Clinical Case Studies. 2(2), 107–126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1534650102250778
  51. [51] Lesieur, O., Genteuil, L., Leloup, M., 2017. A few realistic questions raised by organ retrieval in the intensive care unit. Annals of Translational Medicine. 5(Suppl 4), S44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21037/atm.2017.05.08
  52. [52] Mroz, S., Dierickx, S., Deliëns, L., et al., 2020. Assisted dying around the world: a status quaestionis. Annals of Palliative Medicine. 10(3), 3540553. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21037/apm-20-637
  53. [53] Lawbaugh, W.M., 2005. Existential, Theological, and Psychological Concepts of Death: A Personal Retrospective. Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling: Advancing theory and professional practice through scholarly and reflective publications. 59(1–2), 17–27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/154230500505900103
  54. [54] Heidenreich, T., Noyon, A., Worrell, M., et al., 2021. Existential Approaches and Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Challenges and Potential. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy. 14(1), 209–234. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-020-00096-1
  55. [55] Lavin, M., 1989. Separating death from mind and morals. Public Affairs Quarterly. 3(3), 35–47. DOI: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11652545
  56. [56] Lai, P., 2014. Writing Conclusions. Available from: https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/undergraduate/paragraphs/conclusion (cited 30 May 2025).
  57. [57] Chiswick, M.L., 2004. Writing a research paper. Current Paediatrics. 14(6), 513–518. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cupe.2004.07.003
  58. [58] Kaunda, C.J., Lee, M., 2025. 'Through Valley of the Shadow of Death': Death In-Between and Betwixt "Life After Life" in Mind Uploading Immortality. Religions. 16(5), 640. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16050640
  59. [59] Hughes, J.P., 2007. Essay: The end of death? The New Scientist. 196(2625), 44–45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0262-4079(07)62599-8
  60. [60] Alisha, R.N., Widyastuti, T., 2020. The Authenticity of Death: A Study of Tillich Existentialism in Lyudmila Ulitskaya's The Funeral Party. In Proceedings of the Fourth International University Symposium on Humanities and Arts (INUSHARTS 2019), Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, West Java, Indonesia, 23–25 July 2019; pp. 169–173. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200729.033

How to Cite

La Shun L. Carroll. Rethinking Death: A Philosophical and Biomedical Model of Ontological Priority. Philosophy and Realistic Reflection. 13 June 2025. https://doi.org/10.55121/prr.v2i1.501
Citation formats

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2025 La Shun L. Carroll. Published by Japan Bilingual Publishing Co..

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Article Metrics

899Abstract views
643Downloads