LAUSR

Laura Specker Sullivan’s article “Pure Experience and Disorders of Consciousness” provides an alternative account of consciousness in medical decision making. She argues focusing solely on phenomenological consciousness misses the mark in guiding medical decisions for patients with disorders of consciousness. Rather, we should also account for “pure experience” consciousness (PEC), the view that what matters “is the bare existence of subjective experience—that there is something it is like to be you, not the particular quality of what this experience is like nor the objective content of this experience” (Specker Sullivan 2018, 112). In this brief commentary, I argue that PEC is not what matters in medical ethics, as it offers little guidance to decision makers. First, it is unclear what pure experience means beyond baseline brain activity (i.e., the patient is not brain dead). Second, PEC seems to play the same role as moral status: If the patient has PEC (like moral status), the patient enters into the moral calculus. This is not a novel concept in clinical ethics. While Specker Sullivan may be right that PEC matters, the concept plays the same role as moral status, and does little to help stakeholders beyond reminding them that the patient matters even if he or she has no experiences at the time. DESCRIBING PURE EXPERIENCE CONSCIOUSNESS