Page - 120 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

120 • Cyborg Mind as decision-making. These studies suggest that the development of complex nervous systems is the result of a continuous, self-organising process, with close relationships existing between particular brain structures and specific brain functions.85 These close relationships have been demonstrated in clinical studies through the loss of specific functions following structural damage. In addi- tion, noninvasive neuroimaging has shown that personal decisions and emo- tions are preceded by the activation of defined networks of neurons.86 This means that both at the subconscious and conscious levels, human percep- tions, reasoning, decision-making, planning, thoughts, arguments and value assignments are influenced by neurological states and developments.87 But does this then mean that all the thoughts of an individual are only caused and controlled by his or her brain? Or do human beings still have free will? The debate relating to free will, and what this represents, has been around for millennia, having been of interest to philosophers, theologians, lawyers, ethicists and many others in various disciplines. One of the first times this was expressed was in the story of the mythical Greek king Oedipus recorded by the ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles (ca. 497/496 BCE  – 406/405 BCE). In the legend, Oedipus seems to have been imprisoned by his destiny to fulfil a prophecy that predicted that he would kill his father and marry his mother, thus bringing disaster on his city and family. Another example where free will was examined was in the 1956 book The Minority Report written by the American science-fiction writer Philip Dick (1928–82), which was made into a film of the same name by the American Steven Spielberg in 2002. This recounted the way in which the police sought to arrest individuals before they had committed a crime by reading their minds. For a person to be a free agent with free will means that he or she has the ability to initiate and execute plans of action. More specifically, this includes motivational, cognitive, affective and physical capacities that enable a person to shape and translate mental states such as desires, beliefs, emotions, reasons and intentions into voluntary actions. The person experiences a sense of being in control of what he or she does. The concept of persons being free agents is also at the heart of how human beings understand themselves as persons and what it means to be conscious, thinking and moral agents.88 In 2015, the U.S. Presidential Commission of the Study of Bioethical Issues defined such moral agents as ‘individuals capable of acting freely and making judgments for which they can be praised, blamed, or held responsible’.89 At the same time, however, agreement exists that free will experiences necessarily depend on human brain functions and that when some functional This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.