Philosophical and Ethical Challenges of Using Neurotechnologies in Higher Education: A Crisis of Identity

The aim of the article is to determine the philosophical and ethical dimension of the use of neurotechnologies in higher education. The objectives of the study are focused on distinguishing the problem of neuroethics from the broader trend of technological solutions. The philosophical foundation of the research is reduced to ethical reservations regarding the status of neurotechnologies in education, which are considered alongside the epistemological endorsement and existential uncertainty of this instrument. The research methodology is concentrated around an analytical cluster of general scientific and philosophical approaches. The scholarly vectors of comparative and discourse analysis are supplemented by corresponding philosophical cases of dialectics and synergy. The results of the study indicate the formation, within the contemporary scientific and philosophical worldview, of a balance between the technological characteristics of neuroactivity in higher education and the worldview-based and mental regulative principles governing its application. The role of neurotechnologies is realised through cases of neuromonitoring, neurointerfaces, and cognitive enhancement, which demonstrate an unequivocal influence on the cognitive potential of participants in the educational process. The philosophical and ethical dilemma points to the need to protect self-identity from an aggressive external factor. Under posthumanist conditions of the blurring of human essence and the sociocultural dominance of pragmatic solutions, the crisis of self-identity deepens. Neurotechnologies may shape two scenarios of influence on the human-centred development of science and philosophy: a radical one, involving the replacement of human cognitive potential by technological solutions, with a partial or complete loss of identity; and an evolutionary one, in which they acquire the status of an epistemologically active instrument that expands the human intellectual and emotional repertoire without threatening the existential constants of human essence and nature.