The Metaphysical Irreversibility of Death

The popularization of the term "clinical death" for the absence of vital signs suggests the possibility of a radical change in our understanding of death. While death used to be considered -something that we do not have the power to reverse, contemporary optimism suggests that we may be able to restore life to a dead organism. In this article, I examine how the term "death" is used today to clarify what kind of irreversibility we ought to assign to it. I conclude that the kind of irreversibility closest to our concept of death is one that depends on implicit metaphysical commitments: we generally treat death as though it were metaphysically irreversible, and therefore not reversible by us.