Identity, Agency, and Responsibility in the Context of Emerging Neurotechnologies: A Protestant Christian Perspective

The paper will begin by surveying various emerging neurotechnologies that combine neuroscience with artificial intelligence to enable the collection and interpretation of brain data, brain-to-machine and brain-to-brain communication, and modifications of neural function (for overviews, see Yuste et al. 2017; Farahany 2023). These raise a range of metaphysical, theological, and ethical questions (cf. Yuste et al 2017; Coin et al. 2020), of which the paper will focus on three concerning identity, agency, and responsibility: (1) What does it mean to be human in the context of emerging neurotechnologies, and do the aims of these technologies threaten or question our humanity in ways that call for a response? (2) How might emerging neurotechnologies call individual identity into question, and how should we respond? (3) How should we understand and support moral agency and responsibility in the context of emerging neurotechnologies? These will be addressed from the standpoint of a Protestant Christian theological tradition, drawing on two key biblical and theological themes: the image of God and the body of Christ.

1) On the first question, it has long been argued that cyborgs and human-machine hybridity unsettle the boundaries by which we try to define human identity (Ranisch and Sorgner 2015). While this unsettling of boundaries may be salutary in many ways – as the critical posthumanist literature argues – it could also have more worrying implications. In Christian theology, an obvious way to think about what it means to be human is to draw on the doctrine of the *imago Dei*. Yet there are pitfalls here. It might be tempting to look to discredited “structural” understandings of the *imago* for definitive criteria of human identity. Instead, the paper will refer to various more defensible readings, and in particular will follow McFadyen (2016) and O’Donnell (2018) in reading the *imago Dei* “performatively.” Such a reading is less concerned with *defining* the human than with “actively seeking humanity” (McFadyen 2016: 112) where circumstances or human actions question, deny, or diminish the humanity of some. Such a reading is concerned less with policing species boundaries than with discerning what it means to live well together. Discerning what a faithful performance of the *imago Dei* might look like in the context of emerging neurotechnologies leads to the second and third questions.

2) Regarding the second, there is already evidence that while therapeutic uses of neurotechnologies give some patients greater confidence and independence, others report a loss or confusion of their sense of self (Yuste et al. 2017; Coin et al. 2020). The prospect of direct brain-to-brain communication and the linking of different individuals’ brains in decision-making and action (Farahany 2023: ch. 9) could pose deeper puzzles about how we should understand our individual identities and sense of self. The Pauline metaphor of the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-17) offers a promising theological approach here, setting forth a vision of human sociality in which members are united and interdependent without losing their identity to the collective, and social relations are marked by solidarity and mutual care. This way of thinking about individual identity and social relations will be developed with the help of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology (Bonhoeffer 1998), in particular the themes of “collective personhood” and “Christ existing as community.” For Bonhoeffer, the new form of collective personhood made possible by Christ is characterized by “vicarious representative action.” In his later work, this theme becomes closely linked with responsibility, the focus of my third question.

3) Problems of accountability and responsibility for AI-mediated decisions and actions are already familiar, and these could deepen greatly with the development of neurotechnologies connecting users’ brains to robotic devices or linking different users’ brains in collective decision-making and action. Bonhoeffer’s account of “the structure of responsible life” in *Ethics* (Bonhoeffer 2005: 257-89) offers valuable theological resources for considering these problems. Bonhoeffer believes that the new form of sociality marked by vicarious representative action is a reality for all humanity, whether acknowledged or not. At the heart of this account is the idea that responsibility may involve acting on behalf of one another, as Christ acted on behalf of humanity. Among other things, this “refutes the fiction that the isolated individual is the agent of all ethical behavior” (2005: 258) and introduces the possibility that for some, responsible life might involve strengthening and “raising to a conscious level” the responsibility of others (2005: 258). Here is a theological account in which moral agency is not a function only of isolated individuals, yet recognizing this need not efface individual responsibility.

The paper will conclude that a faithful performance of the *imago Dei* in the context of emerging neurotechnologies will enact this vision of human sociality, agency, and responsibility. This account offers pointers for moral discernment about such technologies. For example, applications that render responsibility and accountability ambiguous and hard to trace should be resisted. But it is also possible to envisage applications that could support and strengthen users’ capacity for responsible decision-making and action, and these could in principle be welcomed as exercises of vicarious representative action.

References

Bonhoeffer, D. (1998). *Sanctorum Communio*, tr. R. Krauss and N. Lukens, Minneapolis: Fortress.

Bonhoeffer, D. (2005). *Ethics*, tr. R. Krauss et al., Minneapolis: Fortress.

Coin, A., et al. (2020). “Ethical Aspects of BCI Technology: What is the State of the Art?” *Philosophies* 5.4: 31.

Farahany, N. (2023). *The Battle for Your Brain*, New York: St Martin’s.

McFadyen, A. (2016). “Redeeming the Image,” *International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church* 16.2: 108-25.

O’Donnell, K. (2018). “Performing the *Imago Dei*: Human Enhancement, Artificial Intelligence and Optative Image-Bearing,” *International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church* 18.1: 4-15.

Ranisch, R., and Sorgner, S. L., eds. (2015). *Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction*, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Yuste, R., et al. (2017). “Four Ethical Priorities for Neuroscience and AI,” *Nature* 551: 159-62.