Abstract
Technologies controlled directly by the brain are being developed, evolving based on insights gained from neuroscience, and rehabilitative medicine. Besides neuro-controlled prosthetics aimed at restoring function lost somehow, technologies controlled via brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) may also extend a user’s horizon of action, freed from the need for bodily movement. Whilst BCI-mediated action ought to be, on the whole, treated as conventional action, law and policy ought to be amended to accommodate BCI action by broadening the definition of action as “willed bodily movement”. Moreover, there are some dimensions of BCI mediated action that are significantly different to conventional cases. These relate to control. Specifically, to limits in both controllability of BCIs via neural states, and in foreseeability of outcomes from such actions. In some specific type of case, BCI-mediated action may be due to different ethical evaluation from conventional action.
Highlights
When assessing agents’ moral responsibility for instances of action we examine i) the degree of control they had over the relevant causal processes and ii) the degree of foreseeability of the morally relevant outcomes produced by instigating or inhibiting the relevant causal processes
Sam’s moral responsibility would only be reduced if Sam lacked full control over his arm, or if he was not expected to foresee the harm that propelling his arm would cause
Where a person cannot act but for their braincomputer interfaces (BCIs) device, we argue that ascriptions of responsibility ought to be nuanced by an understanding that a given context may not be optimally accessible to that person
Summary
When assessing agents’ moral responsibility for instances of action (and associated outcomes) we examine i) the degree of control they had over the relevant causal processes and ii) the degree of foreseeability of the morally relevant outcomes produced by instigating or inhibiting (or failing to instigate or inhibit) the relevant causal processes. In the BCI case, we have to consider whether Bob intended to realize the brain activity that triggered the device, whether the device decoded the activity as intended, or whether the device misfired in some other way out of Bob’s control Even were these facts to be known, the ascription of responsibility to Bob would require careful analysis of the degree of control Bob has over which parts of the process and how foreseeable particular neural activity–behavior outcome pairs are. We have to consider executive-implementational control dimensions and intentions, and the relations among some variety of technical considerations to do with brain activity recording, decoding, classifying, the triggering of devices, and the functioning of those devices. As the BCI’s processing partly determines the outputTaken together, these three limits on user device control have implications for the foreseeability of outcome from device use
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