Why we need a phenomenology of Brain Computert Interface-mediated communication

In this paper, I argue for the need of an interdisciplinary and empirically informed phenomenology of communicating through Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs). BCIs are becoming more used as a form of Augmentative and Assistive Communication technologies (AAC-tech), to provide people without a natural speaking voice with a manner of communication. Perhaps the most promising application of BCI as AAC-technology are implantable speech-BCIs, devices that record and translate brain activity of attempted speech into words on an external interface. This technology could enable individuals who have lost control over their muscles, such as ALS-induced Locked-In patients, to regain their communicative abilities.

In the most recent breakthrough in the development of implantable speech-BCIs it was claimed that BCIs have the potential to ‘restore’ communication (Chang et al., 2022). However, I argue from a postphenomenological and enactive 4E-perspective that this is not the full picture, and that we should be wary of these kind of restoration-claims. The idea that BCIs can restore communication rests on two invalid instrumental assumptions. One is that BCI is a neutral tool, the other is that communication is an instrumental act, by which I mean a functional exchange of information. I argue that speech-BCIs are not neutral tools but mediate the experience of communication, thereby installing a new kind of communication. Zooming in on this mediated experience of communication by drawing on personal testimonies from AAC-users, I show, in line with recent work from Van Grunsven & Roeser (2022) that the affordances of this mediated form of communication are instrumental, leading to a limited experience of communication that misses out on the enactive, embodied and social process that interpersonal communication is.

After establishing that the experience of communicating through an implantable speech-BCI differs from communicating through conventional speech, the question rises how this experience is different. Surprisingly, the phenomenology of BCI-mediated communication, and phenomenologies of neurotechnologies in general, have received little attention in the ethical debate around BCIs. I argue that this phenomenology is important to understand for three reasons. One, for scientific reasons, it can help to increase the understanding of the relationship between neurotechnology, the brain, embodiment, and our subjective experience. Two, for moral reasons, the experience of the users must be included as a matter of epistemic justice and as a matter of epistemic access to moral knowledge. Three, future research and development in the field of BCI, neurotechnology, and AAC-technology needs to be informed by the scientific and moral knowledge that reason one and two provide. Concluding, neuroscientists, engineers, designers, and philosophers share the interdisciplinary task to pursue an empirically informed phenomenology of BCI-mediated communication.