Decentralising the Self - Ethical Considerations in Utilizing Decentralised Web Technology for Direct Brain Interfaces.

The rapidly advancing field of brain-computer (BCI) and brain-to-brain interfaces (BBI) is stimulating interest across various sectors including medicine, entertainment, research, and military. The developers of large-scale brain-computer networks, sometimes dubbed 'Mindplexes' or 'Cloudminds', aim to enhance cognitive functions by distributing them across expansive networks. A key technical challenge is the efficient transmission and storage of information. One proposed solution is employing blockchain technology over Web 3.0 to create decentralised cognitive entities. This paper explores the potential of a decentralised web for coordinating large brain-computer constellations, and its associated benefits, focusing in particular on the conceptual and ethical challenges this innovation may pose pertaining to (1) Identity, (2) Sovereignty (encompassing Autonomy, Authenticity, and Ownership), (3) Responsibility and Accountability, and (4) Privacy, Safety, and Security. We suggest that while a decentralised web can address some concerns and mitigate certain risks, underlying ethical issues persist. Fundamental questions about entity definition within these networks, the distinctions between individuals and collectives, and responsibility distribution within and between networks, demand further exploration.

Withering Minds: towards a unified embodied mind theory of personal identity for understanding dementia.

A prominent view on personal identity over time, Jeff McMahan's 'Embodied Mind Account' (2002) holds that we cease to exist only once our brains can no longer sustain the basic capacity to uphold consciousness. One of the many implications of this view on identity persistence is that we continue to exist throughout even the most severe cases of dementia, until our consciousness irreversibly shuts down. In this paper, I argue that, while the most convincing of prominent accounts of personal identity over time, McMahan's account faces serious challenges in explanatory power of dementias and related neurodegenerative conditions. Particularly, this becomes visible in the face of emerging methods for neural tissue regeneration, and the possibility of 're-emerging patients'. I argue that medical professionals' neglecting qualitative aspects of identity risks resulting in grave misunderstandings in decision-making processes, and ethically objectionable outcomes in future practices. Finally, I propose revisions which could potentially salvage the great benefits that Embodied Mind Theory still can bring to the field of dementia care in terms of understanding life, death, and identity across the lifespan.

How to build a game for empirical bioethics research: The case of 'Tracing Tomorrow'.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the field of empirical bioethics requires methodological innovations that can keep up with the scale and pace of contemporary research in health and medicine. With that in mind, we have recently argued for Design Bioethics-the use of purpose-built, engineered research tools that allow researchers to investigate moral decision-making in ways that are embodied and contextualized. In this paper, we outline the development, testing and implementation of a novel prototype tool in the Design Bioethics Workshop-with each step illustrated with collected data. Titled 'Tracing Tomorrow' (www.tracingtomorrow.org), the tool is a narrative game to investigate young people's values and preferences in the context of digital phenotyping for mental health. The process involved (1) Working with young people to discover, validate and define the morally relevant cases or problems, (2) Building and testing the game concept in collaboration with relevant groups and game developers, (3) Developing prototypes that were tested and iterated in partnership with groups of young people and game developers and (4) Disseminating the game to young people to collect data to investigate research questions. We argue that Design Bioethics yields tools that are relevant, representative and meaningful to target populations and provide improved data for bioethics analysis. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: In planning and conducting this study, we consulted with young people from a diverse range of backgrounds, including the NeurOX Young People's Advisory Group, the What Lies Ahead Junior Researchers Team, Censuswide youth participants and young people from the Livity Youth Network.

On the (Non-)Rationality of Human Enhancement and Transhumanism.

The human enhancement debate has over the last few decades been concerned with ethical issues in methods for improving the physical, cognitive, or emotive states of individual people, and of the human species as a whole. Arguments in favour of enhancement defend it as a paradigm of rationality, presenting it as a clear-eyed, logical defence of what we stand to gain from transcending the typical limits of our species. If these arguments are correct, it appears that adults should in principle be able to make rational and informed decisions about enhancing themselves. In this paper, however, we suggest that a rational and informed choice to enhance oneself may in some cases be impossible. Drawing on L. A. Paul's work on 'transformative experience', we argue that some enhancements-such as certain moral or cognitive modifications-may give rise to unbridgeable epistemic gaps in key domains. Importantly, such gaps could prove to be not merely contingently unbridgeable due to a lack of information at a given moment, but radically unbridgeable, making someone in a non-enhanced state inherently unable to conceive of what it would be like to be enhanced in a particular way. Where this experience is key to understanding what values are being pursued by the enhancement itself, it may prove impossible for a person to be sufficiently informed, and to make a rational decision about whether or not to enhance herself. This poses a challenge for human enhancement proponents in general, and for transhumanists in particular.

Tracing Tomorrow: young people's preferences and values related to use of personal sensing to predict mental health, using a digital game methodology.

BACKGROUND: Use of personal sensing to predict mental health risk has sparked interest in adolescent psychiatry, offering a potential tool for targeted early intervention. OBJECTIVES: We investigated the preferences and values of UK adolescents with regard to use of digital sensing information, including social media and internet searching behaviour. We also investigated the impact of risk information on adolescents' self-understanding. METHODS: Following a Design Bioethics approach, we created and disseminated a purpose-built digital game (www.tracingtomorrow.org) that immersed the player-character in a fictional scenario in which they received a risk assessment for depression Data were collected through game choices across relevant scenarios, with decision-making supported through clickable information points. FINDINGS: The game was played by 7337 UK adolescents aged 16-18 years. Most participants were willing to personally communicate mental health risk information to their parents or best friend. The acceptability of school involvement in risk predictions based on digital traces was mixed, due mainly to privacy concerns. Most participants indicated that risk information could negatively impact their academic self-understanding. Participants overwhelmingly preferred individual face-to-face over digital options for support. CONCLUSIONS: The potential of digital phenotyping in supporting early intervention in mental health can only be fulfilled if data are collected, communicated and actioned in ways that are trustworthy, relevant and acceptable to young people. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: To minimise the risk of ethical harms in real-world applications of preventive psychiatric technologies, it is essential to investigate young people's values and preferences as part of design and implementation processes.

Merging Minds: The Conceptual and Ethical Impacts of Emerging Technologies for Collective Minds.

A growing number of technologies are currently being developed to improve and distribute thinking and decision-making. Rapid progress in brain-to-brain interfacing and swarming technologies promises to transform how we think about collective and collaborative cognitive tasks across domains, ranging from research to entertainment, and from therapeutics to military applications. As these tools continue to improve, we are prompted to monitor how they may affect our society on a broader level, but also how they may reshape our fundamental understanding of agency, responsibility, and other key concepts of our moral landscape. In this paper we take a closer look at this class of technologies - Technologies for Collective Minds - to see not only how their implementation may react with commonly held moral values, but also how they challenge our underlying concepts of what constitutes collective or individual agency. We argue that prominent contemporary frameworks for understanding collective agency and responsibility are insufficient in terms of accurately describing the relationships enabled by Technologies for Collective Minds, and that they therefore risk obstructing ethical analysis of the implementation of these technologies in society. We propose a more multidimensional approach to better understand this set of technologies, and to facilitate future research on the ethics of Technologies for Collective Minds.

The Mystery of Mental Integrity: Clarifying Its Relevance to Neurotechnologies.

The concept of mental integrity is currently a significant topic in discussions concerning the regulation of neurotechnologies. Technologies such as deep brain stimulation and brain-computer interfaces are believed to pose a unique threat to mental integrity, and some authors have advocated for a legal right to protect it. Despite this, there remains uncertainty about what mental integrity entails and why it is important. Various interpretations of the concept have been proposed, but the literature on the subject is inconclusive. Here we consider a number of possible interpretations and argue that the most plausible one concerns neurotechnologies that bypass one's reasoning capacities, and do so specifically in ways that reliably lead to alienation from one's mental states. This narrows the scope of what constitutes a threat to mental integrity and offers a more precise role for the concept to play in the ethical evaluation of neurotechnologies.

Testing Design Bioethics Methods: Comparing a Digital Game with a Vignette Survey for Neuroethics Research with Young People.

BACKGROUND: Over the last decades, the neurosciences, behavioral sciences, and the social sciences have all seen a rapid development of innovative research methods. The field of bioethics, however, has trailed behind in methodological innovation. Despite the so-called "empirical turn" in bioethics, research methodology for project development, data collection and analysis, and dissemination has remained largely restricted to surveys, interviews, and research papers. We have previously argued for a "Design Bioethics" approach to empirical bioethics methodology, which develops purpose-built methods for investigation of bioethical concerns. In this paper we compare a research tool created using a design bioethics approach to a "methods-as-usual" approach in empirical bioethics. METHODS: Our study compared dimensions of engagement with a digital game we created, called "Tracing Tomorrow," to a standard vignette survey. The two tools investigated the same subject matter, digital phenotyping for mental health, in a sample of 301 UK adolescents. RESULTS: Participants who played the game reported a greater sense of presence, emotional engagement, cognitive absorption, and mental health ethics insight, compared to participants who completed the vignette survey. Perceived authenticity and curiosity/motivation to learn more was equivalent for both methods. CONCLUSION: The results of this study highlights the importance of purpose-built methodology for empirical bioethics research.

On frail minds: addressing and assessing age-related neural decline and disease.

The terminology surrounding frailty is used in clinical settings, and in research and development for identifying processes of, and patients in, age-related physical decline. However, a framework suitable for age-related neurodegenerative diseases needs to (1) adequately account for the effects that the processes of aging have on neural decline and disease, and (2) be helpful in identifying relevant groups of users and patients. This is becoming increasingly necessary due to emerging possibilities to detect, prevent, and treat age-related neural decline and disease. Based on a number of relevant criteria, I distinguish four groups of patients and users: robust, non-frail, pre-frail, and frail. With the four groups defined, ethical assessments can be made on an individual basis regarding which medical technologies are best suited for a person who risks, or suffers from, age-related neurodegenerative disease.