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Mental Privacy, Cognitive Liberty, and Hog-tying

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Abstract

As the science and technology of the brain and mind develop, so do the ways in which brains and minds may be surveilled and manipulated. Some cognitive libertarians worry that these developments undermine cognitive liberty or “freedom of thought.” I argue that protecting an individual’s cognitive liberty undermines others’ ability to use their own cognitive liberty. Given that the threatening devices and processes are not relevantly different from ordinary and frequent intrusions upon one’s brain and mind, strong protections of cognitive liberty may proscribe neurotechnological intrusions but also ordinary intrusions. Thus, the cognitive libertarian position “hog-ties” others’ use of their own liberties. This problem for the cognitive libertarian is the same problem that ordinary libertarianism faces in protecting individual rights to property and person. But the libertarian strategies for resolving the problem don’t work for the cognitive libertarian. I conclude that the right to mental privacy is weaker than what cognitive libertarians want it to be.

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Notes

  1. See Muñoz, et al. (2023) for a thorough framework for thinking about neurorights and freedom of the will.

  2. The most obvious threats to cognitive liberty are the coercive type, just as the most obvious threats to individual liberty are coercive. But another way in which cognitive liberty might be threatened is when one voluntarily uses invasive neurotechnologies. Thanks to anonymous reviewers for suggesting this point. I don’t address this issue here, but the analogy to the ordinary right to privacy might still be instructive. When a person handcuffs themselves to their bed, are they undermining their own individual liberty? Presumably not, which suggests that similar voluntary use of neurotechnologies fails to undermine cognitive liberty.

  3. For additional examples of those advancing the arguments in support of mental privacy and cognitive liberty, see Bublitz 2014, 2016, 2019; Bublitz and Merkel 2014; Ienca and Andorno 2017; McCarthy-Jones 2019; Paulo and Bublitz 2019

  4. This may include new drugs, or drugs that are commonly used for other reasons, but using them for cognitive enhancement would be off-label.

  5. See, for example, the aforementioned studies and especially Doris (2002) for a detailed argument regarding the implications of this work for moral psychology.

  6. I use the analogy to one’s property simply because those are terms that libertarians use and interact with. It is not to suggest that one’s home is perfectly analogous to one’s mind. There are features of one’s mind that may not be applicable to one’s property, namely that one’s mind seems more constitutive of the self and one’s property does not. See the above section on neurotechnological interventions and identity for why appealing to the relation between one’s mind and the self will not help solve the de-lum** problem for the cognitive libertarian.

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  1. Department of Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law, Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, 1000 Oakland Drive, Kalamazoo, MI, 49008, USA

    P. Crutchfield

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Crutchfield, P. Mental Privacy, Cognitive Liberty, and Hog-tying. Bioethical Inquiry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-024-10344-0

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