Neuroethics, Cognitive Technologies and the Extended Mind Perspective

Current debates in neuroethics engage with extremely diverse technologies, for some of which it is a point of contention whether they should be a topic for neuroethics at all. In this article, I will evaluate extended mind theory’s claim of being able to define the scope of neuroethics’ domain as well as determining the extension of an individual’s mind via its so-called trust and glue criteria. I argue that a) extending the domain of neuroethics by this manoeuvre endangers the theoretical consistency of neuroethics and b) the current state of the trust and glue criteria can introduce a bias towards overstating the relevance which representational devices have in characterising the field of neuroethics as compared to other technologies which are clearly of neuroethical relevance. As a remedy, I suggest a modification of the trust and glue criteria and a broader conception of cognition