By challenging law’s boundary-work and radically (re)imagining its approach to the assemblage of integrated persons and integrated goods, we are tackling the challenges which everyday cyborgs pose for the law. We are investigating where and why (problematic) boundaries and dichotomies occur (e.g. between person and things), examining what the pitfalls and opportunities are when these are transgressed and dissolved, and going beyond the bounded selves conception of persons to develop a novel account of the everyday cyborg in law.
Our aim is for this new account to be empirically-informed and practically useful, with solid conceptual and philosophical underpinnings. To these ends, we are using an iterative and flexible cross-disciplinary approach, consisting of complementary conceptual, empirical, and normative analyses.
Three main research questions (RQs) guide the project:
- What does the (existence of the) everyday cyborg tell us about the limits and opportunities (conceptual, normative, and practical) of law, regulation, and policy with respect to attached and implanted medical devices?
- What insights are revealed when traditional legal, ethical, and conceptual boundaries (e.g. subject-object) are dissolved and reconceptualised in novel ways; e.g. around notions of hybridity or the unbounded self?
- What are the normative implications and alternative legal futures (including for practice and policy) which flow from such a (re)imagining?