one thing that comes up a lot when people argue against pulling our terry schiavo's feeding tube is the fact that she opened her eyes. and there's that photo of her with her eyes open that every news report seems to use.
eyes are important to us on a very basic level. if you draw a geometric figure on a piece of paper, it just looks like a shape. if you put two dots in it, it looks like a face. we see faces everywhere. in clouds, in knots on the side of trees, and in tacos in remote villages on mexico. and it's all because we think we see eyes. but they're not really eyes and they're not really faces. even knowing that when i see a coffee stain with two dots i think of a face. i can't help it.
when we look at real eyes, we also think we see consciousness. i see it whenever an animal looks at me. last summer i was reading outside and looked up to see a squirrel staring at me. i could imagine i saw awareness there. no one knows for sure what they have, but i personally doubt they have anything resembling human consciousness. but it's hard not to think so when they look at you.
last night we saw shaun of the dead, a fun movie by the way. when someone turned into a zombie their eyes went white, seemingly covered by some kind of film. they didn't look like normal eyes anymore. it meant they were no longer conscious and the film, even a fairly mindless film like "shaun of the dead," didn't need to tell us that.
terry schiavo's open eyes are misleading. it neither means she is conscious or unconscious. people in persistent vegetative states sometimes open their eyes. despite our gut level feelings that the eyes are significant to the debate, they really are not.
just something to keep in mind every time you see that photo or read someone's outraged post citing terry's open eyes.
