Mapping the Dimensions of Agency

AJOB Neurosci., 2021 · DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2021.1896599 · Published: January 1, 2021

Simple Explanation

Neural devices can restore lost abilities, but raise concerns about agency, such as control, responsibility, privacy, and trust. Examining these concerns separately misses the interconnectedness of living with a neural device. The ethical dimensions of responsibility, privacy, authenticity, and trust are intricately inter-related in an individual’s experience of agency. Questioning one’s responsibility, for instance, may lead to feelings of confusion over authenticity. This paper offers a map of the dimensions of agency and their interrelations as they are implicated in neural technology, situating this map within the context of existing neuroethics literature and reports from users of neurotechnologies.

Study Duration

Not specified

Participants

Users of neurotechnologies and hypothetical cases

Evidence Level

Not specified

Key Findings

1
The dimension of responsibility is linked to the agential competency of exercising control over BCI-mediated movement.
2
Privacy is linked to the agential competency of negotiating access in a relational context with others.
3
Authenticity is tied to the agential competency of achieving continuity through integrating aspects of the self.

Research Summary

The authors identify four dimensions of ethical inquiry—responsibility, privacy, authenticity, and trust—as dimensions of agency that may be impacted by the use of neurotechnologies. They present an Agency Map to illustrate how these dimensions of agency are integrated into a person’s experience as they use neurotechnology. The Agency Map is meant to be a guide for recognizing how neurotechnologies may change users’ experience of agency—either through enhancing it or addressing a problem of agency in one dimension only to create new agential problems in others.

Practical Implications

Qualitative Assessment Tool

The agency map can form the basis of a qualitative assessment tool (Q-ACT) for researchers and clinicians to assess agential issues more effectively.

Tailored Assessment

A Q-ACT tool will need to be tailored to the particular features of neurotechnologies and populations targeted by these technologies.

Anticipate Issues

Considering the possible interactions between the competencies and dimensions of agency will help the field anticipate issues with neurotechnologies we might otherwise overlook.

Study Limitations

1
The relational influence of others on one’s individual goals and capacity to act is still underexplored.
2
External metrics can sometimes be faulty and convey a distorted reality.
3
The utility of the Agency Map is based on hypothetical case studies.

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