From Aristotelian Act-Potency to Artificial Algorithms: Neuroethics of AI-mediated Neurotechnology as Extrinsic Actualizing Principle and Integrity of Human Agency

This paper examines the Aristotelian framework of act and potency in relation to human moral agency and evaluates its implications in the context of AI-mediated neuroenhancement. Drawing on Aristotle’s account of energeia as the intrinsic actualization of rational potential grounded in the soul as formal and final cause, the paper argues that human agency consists in a unified process of internally ordered actualization. Against this metaphysical background, contemporary brain–computer interfaces and AI-driven neurotechnologies are analyzed as potential extrinsic efficient causes that not only remove impediments to human functioning but may also participate in, or alter, the process of cognitive and intentional actualization itself. The paper distinguishes between restorative interventions, which re-enable the natural exercise of latent capacities, and augmentative systems, which introduce novel operational structures into cognition and decision-making. While the former can be understood as compatible with Aristotelian metaphysics, the latter risk disrupting the unity of agency by introducing an external principle into the act–potency structure of human action. Such integration raises fundamental questions concerning the locus of agency, the integrity of the rational soul as the source of action, and the grounding of moral responsibility. By bringing Aristotelian metaphysics into dialogue with contemporary developments in artificial intelligence and neurotechnology, the paper argues that AI-mediated enhancement, when it functions as a co-actualizing principle, challenges the classical account of unified moral agency. It concludes that the incorporation of external computational systems into the process of actualization may reconfigure the metaphysical architecture of human action, thereby complicating traditional accounts of responsibility, identity, and the unity of the human person.