Losing Meaning: Philosophical Reflections on Neural Interventions and their Influence on Narrative Identity

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Philosophy of Mind
• Neuroethics

Background:

• Neural interventions can cause significant changes in personality and mood.
• Concerns about these changes often focus on threats to the narrative self.
• Existing neuroethical debates primarily address potential harms to the self's continuity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a neglected dimension of impact: the loss of meaning in self-narratives due to neural interventions.
• To explore how neural interventions affect the subjective value attributed to actions, feelings, and beliefs.
• To analyze the factors contributing to this loss of meaning.

Main Methods:

• Philosophical analysis of the concept of meaning in self-narratives.
• Examination of how different neural interventions impact meaning.
• Comparative analysis of methods including Deep Brain Stimulation, Prozac, Ritalin, psychedelics, and psychotherapy.

Main Results:

• Neural interventions can lead to a loss of meaning by favoring biochemical explanations over intentional ones.
• This loss of meaning can be problematic, especially when unexpected or unwanted.
• Factors influencing the degree of meaning loss include the intervention's rate of change, causal transparency, patient involvement, and phenomenological experience.

Conclusions:

• A critical aspect of neural interventions' impact on the self is their potential to diminish the meaning of experiences.
• Understanding the mechanisms behind this loss of meaning is crucial for neuroethics.
• The characteristics of the neural intervention significantly determine the extent to which meaning is affected.