Abstract

Emerging neurotechnologies promise to make possible the collection and analysis of users’ brain data, the connection of brains to machines or other brains, and modification of brain functions. This article explores questions about identity, agency, moral responsibility, and social justice raised by these technological prospects. The ethical analysis of these questions is framed in terms of the common good, understood as the conditions that make for the fullest possible flourishing of all. Within that perspective, our questions about neurotechnologies are explored by means of some key theological and ethical themes: the imago Dei, understood ‘performatively’ as recommended by Alistair McFadyen, the vision of human sociality set forth in the Pauline metaphor of the body of Christ, as explicated in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology, Bonhoeffer's concept of ‘vicarious representative action’, and the account of responsible life in his Ethics.