Memory, identity, and technology: explicating functionalist positions in the hippocampal cognitive prosthesis

Researchers in America are developing a hippocampal cognitive prosthesis. The technology aims to improve or even restore memory for people with Alzheimer’s disease through implanting electrodes into the brain. In this paper we discuss the ways that this technology could affect memory, with concomitant potential for impact on personal identity and related attributes like autonomy, agency, and authenticity. To do this we describe how developers of technologies like this adopt functionalist positions on minds and brains, whereby functionally equivalent technology can undertake functions previously executed by the brain without negative impact on mental states. Our position is that such accounts are too uncertain to adopt uncritically, and after examining some critiques of functionalism, we argue that material differences in function could affect the phenomenological experience of mental state generation, including memory. We conclude with proposals for researchers to consider so as to take into account some of these limitations.