Mental integrity, autonomy, and fundamental interests

Abstract

Many technology ethicists hold that the time has come to articulateneurorights: our normative claims vis-à-vis our brains and minds. One such claim is the right tomental integrity(‘MI’). I begin by considering some paradigmatic threats to MI (§1) and how the dominant autonomy-based conception (‘ABC’) of MI attempts to make sense of them (§2). I next consider the objection that the ABC isoverbroadin its understanding of what threatens MI and suggest a friendly revision to the ABC that addresses the objection (§3). I then consider a second objection: that the ABC cannot make sense of the MI of thenon-autonomous. This objection appears fatal even to the revised ABC (§4). On that basis, I develop an alternative conception on which MI is grounded in a plurality of simpler capacities, namely, those foraffect,cognition, andvolition. Each of these more basic capacities grounds a set of fundamental interests, and they are for that reason worthy of protection even when they do not rise to the level of complexity necessary for autonomy (§5). This yields a fully general theory of MI that accounts for its manifestations in both the autonomous and the non-autonomous.