Abstract

Ethical analyses of the effects of neural interventions commonly focus on changes to personality and behavior, interpreting these changes in terms of authenticity and identity. These phenomena have led to debate among ethicists about the meaning of these terms for ethical analysis of such interventions. While these theoretical approaches have different criteria for ethical significance, they agree that patients’ reports are concerning because a sense of self is valuable. In this paper, I question this assumption. I propose that the Buddhist theory of no‐self offers a novel approach to making ethical sense of patients’ claims following deep brain stimulation. This alternative approach is based on the value of insight into patterns of cause and effect among mental states and actions.