University of Washington.
Oregon Health and Science University.
AJOB Neurosci. 2021 Apr-Sep;12(2-3):172-186. doi: 10.1080/21507740.2021.1896599. Epub 2021 Mar 25.
Neural devices have the capacity to enable users to regain abilities lost due to disease or injury - for instance, a deep brain stimulator (DBS) that allows a person with Parkinson's disease to regain the ability to fluently perform movements or a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) that enables a person with spinal cord injury to control a robotic arm. While users recognize and appreciate the technologies' capacity to maintain or restore their capabilities, the neuroethics literature is replete with examples of concerns expressed about agentive capacities: A perceived lack of control over the movement of a robotic arm might result in an altered sense of feeling responsible for that movement. Clinicians or researchers being able to record and access detailed information of a person's brain might raise privacy concerns. A disconnect between previous, current, and future understandings of the self might result in a sense of alienation. The ability to receive and interpret sensory feedback might change whether someone trusts the implanted device or themselves. Inquiries into the nature of these concerns and how to mitigate them has produced scholarship that often emphasizes one issue - responsibility, privacy, authenticity, or trust - selectively. However, we believe that examining these ethical dimensions separately fails to capture a key aspect of the experience of living with a neural device. In exploring their interrelations, we argue that their mutual significance for neuroethical research can be adequately captured if they are described under a unified heading of agency. On these grounds, we propose an "Agency Map" which brings together the diverse neuroethical dimensions and their interrelations into a comprehensive framework. With this, we offer a theoretically-grounded approach to understanding how these various dimensions are interwoven in an individual's experience of agency.
神经设备有能力使使用者恢复因疾病或损伤而丧失的能力——例如，深部脑刺激器 (DBS) 可以使帕金森病患者重新流畅地进行运动，或者脑机接口 (BCI) 可以使脊髓损伤患者控制机械臂。虽然使用者认识到并欣赏这些技术维持或恢复其能力的能力，但神经伦理学文献中充满了对代理能力表示关注的例子：对机械臂运动缺乏控制的感知可能会导致对该运动的责任感发生改变。临床医生或研究人员能够记录和访问一个人的大脑的详细信息可能会引起隐私问题。自我的过去、现在和未来之间的脱节可能会导致疏离感。接收和解释感官反馈的能力可能会改变某人对植入设备或自己的信任程度。对这些问题的性质以及如何减轻这些问题的探究产生了学术研究，这些研究往往选择性地强调一个问题——责任、隐私、真实性或信任。然而，我们认为，单独研究这些伦理维度无法捕捉到使用神经设备的体验的一个关键方面。在探讨它们的相互关系时，我们认为，如果将它们描述为一个统一的代理标题下，就可以充分捕捉到它们对神经伦理学研究的相互意义。基于这些理由，我们提出了一个“代理图”，将神经伦理学的不同维度及其相互关系结合到一个综合框架中。通过这种方式，我们提供了一种理论上的方法来理解这些不同维度如何在个体的代理体验中交织在一起。
