Agency and intervention

Abstract

One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Controlling brain activity to alter perception, behaviour and society'. Novel ways to intervene on brain function raise questions about agency and responsibility. Here, I discuss whether direct brain interventions, and in particular, deep brain stimulation, pose a threat to agency in individual cases, or to our general conceptualization of what it is to be a responsible agent. While I do not currently see evidence that these interventions constitute a global challenge to our concept of agency, they do have the potential to diminish agency in individuals. I consider whether the lack of evidence for a global challenge ratifies our folk conceptions, or is a necessary consequence of them. In closing, I propose that our theoretical understanding of agency and our therapeutic approaches could be improved with a more nuanced, multidimensional view of agency.

Understanding the brain by controlling neural activity

“…If manipulating the brain with the described wide variety of neural devices, prostheses and neurochemical treatments can alter a person's behaviour, this should have an impact on our consideration of what we determine to be ‘self-control’ over own choices and behaviour. The paper by Roskies [ 31 ] discusses the challenges and conceptual hurdles to commonly held concepts of agency that are raised by direct brain intervention.…”

Superación personal y tecnología cyborg: ¿terapia o mejoramiento?

“…A través de un implante en las regiones pectoral o abdominal de la persona enferma que se encuentra conectado a un electrodo alojado en su cerebro, se logra contrarrestar las señales eléctricas que provocan dichos síntomas. Según expertos como Adina Roskies (2015), con el uso de la estimulación cerebral profunda se podrían reducir las alteraciones provocadas en el cerebro por dicha enfermedad de forma drástica. También en el año 2015 se logró crear una prótesis cerebral que podría recuperar (si es posible reproducir en seres humanos los resultados de los tests en animales) las «capacidades memorísticas» de sujetos que sufren daños en la zona del hipocampo.…”

Dimensions of Agency: Conceptual and Data-Driven Approaches

“…Here we describe a different approach to the same question, which is largely data-driven rather than a priori. Our approach is motivated by prior work which contemplated the wide range of reports about changes in agency due to neurointerventions (Roskies 2015). In this early work, I hypothesized that agency is likely to best be modeled as a multidimensional construct, but one in which we don't antecedently know the nature of the dimensions, or how they are interrelated.…”