Determining death remains a problematic task today.

This paper elaborates a taxonomy of pluralism types.

We show that there are three general ways of justifying pluralism.

We conclude that pluralism in the determination of death is a current issue in the academic debate.

Since the neurological criterion of death was established in medical practice in the 1960s, there has been a debate in the academic world about its scientific and philosophical validity, its ethical acceptability, and its political appropriateness. Among the many and varied proposals for revising the criteria for human death, we will focus on those that advocate allowing people to choose their own definition and criteria for death within a range of reasonable or tolerable alternatives. These proposals can be categorized under the rubric of pluralism in the determination of death. In this article, we will outline the main proposals and their rationales and provide a current overview of the state of the controversy.

© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.