Narrative Devices: Neurotechnologies, Information, and Self-Constitution
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Narrative Devices: Neurotechnologies, Information, and Self-Constitution Emily Postan
Received: 4 March 2020 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This article provides a conceptual and normative framework through which we may understand the potentially ethically significant roles that information generated by neurotechnologies about our brains and minds may play in our construction of our identities. Neuroethics debates currently focus disproportionately on the ways that third parties may (ab)use these kinds of information. These debates occlude interests we may have in whether and how we ourselves encounter information about our own brains and minds. This gap is not yet adequately addressed by most allusions in the literature to potential identity impacts. These lack the requisite conceptual or normative foundations to explain why we should be concerned about such effects or how they might be addressed. This article seeks to fill this gap by presenting a normative account of identity as constituted by embodied self-narratives. It proposes that information generated by neurotechnologies can play significant content-supplying and interpretive roles in our construction of our self-narratives. It argues, to the extent that these roles support and detract from the coherence and inhabitability of these narratives, access to information about our brains and minds engages non-trivial identityrelated interests. These claims are illustrated using examples drawn from empirical literature reporting reactions to information generated by implantable predictive BCIs and psychiatric neuroimaging. The article concludes by
E. Postan (*) The University of Edinburgh School of Law, Edinburgh, UK e-mail: [email protected]
highlighting ways in which information generated by neurotechnologies might be governed so as to protect information subjects’ interests in developing and inhabiting their own identities. Keywords Identity . Narrative . Neurotechnology . Neurodata . Cognitive privacy . BCI . Neuroimaging . Information governance
Introduction Neurotechnologies are used ever more widely in healthcare, research and by consumers, as well as in commercial, military, education and judicial settings. These uses involve the monitoring, collection, analysis and generation of increasing quantities of information about the states and functioning of our brains and minds. This discussion advances the claim that our encounters with these kinds of information can affect our identities in ways that warrant serious ethical attention. This claim is underpinned by my central argument that information about our own brains and minds can provide important tools in our construction of coherent, inhabitable identities – self-conceptions that equip us to make sense of and navigate our embodied lives. In doing so, this discussion fills a gap in debates about the ethical concerns and governance priorities raised by neurotechnologies and the information they generate. These debates currently focus chiefly on the ways t
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