Protecting the Mind

Today's post is by Pablo López-Silva who is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Psychology and Research Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile. He is Young Research Fellow at the Millenium Institute for Research in Depression and Personality (Chile). 

Pablo's areas of research are Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Psychology, Psychopathology, and Neuroethics and he's director of the Project FONDECYT 1221058 'The architecture of psychotic delusions'. Here, he discusses his new book, Protecting the Mind: Challenges in Law, Neuroprotection, and Neurorights (Springer 2022, edited by Pablo López-Silva & Luca Valera).

In John Milton’s Comus, the British poet writes “Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind”. With this, the author depicts the human mind as the last bastion of privacy, freedom, and agency. For a long time, this idea remained unchallenged. However, the rapid progress of neurotechnologies with direct access to our neural data has jeopardized the limits of our mind’s privacy and freedom. Large research initiatives around the world (Adams et al. 2020) are mapping with unprecedented degrees of accuracy the neural paths that the brain builds over time to create our experience of reality, and specific mental states such as motor actions, beliefs, memories, and thoughts. 

Importantly, the very possibility of recording with such a precision the neural activity that produce specific mental states might offer scientists and governments the possibility of not only reading, but also controlling the production of mental states in the minds of regular citizens, process that has been called “brain-hacking” (Yuste 2019, 2020a, b). This – almost science fictional - scenario has not only motivated discussions about the ways in which the access and control over our own neural data (mental privacy) could be protected, but also, debates about our very notions of the human mind and the most fundamental anthropological model of ourselves. 

Pablo Lopez-Silva

Protecting the Mind: Challenges in Law, Neuroprotection, and Neurorights is a multidisciplinary effort to think critically about philosophical, ethical, and empirical issues that emerge from the potential misuses of neurotechnologies in medical and non-medical contexts. The contributions contained in the collection cover a wide range of topics, but, altogether, they are able to inform current discussion that local governments are having in light of the many threats posited for the unregulated use of neurotechnologies with access to neural data around the world. 

One of the main concerns that guide this collection has to do with the lack of clear and specific legal frameworks that could protect the mind from external intromission allowed by such neurotechnologies. We believe that important philosophical discussion about how to conceptualize our mind arise from this threat. But, at the same time, we believe that conceptual discussions must be accompanied by specific actions focused on protecting the life of citizens. In this collection, we have tried to maintain an equilibrium between these complementary levels of analysis in order to invite the academic community to keep discussing these matters. Given the ongoing nature of these debates, we hope this collection of essays motivates further discussion to develop comprehensive concepts and to inform contextualized legal frameworks. 

In the last chapter of our collection, we leave open some questions: 

• Must we protect our mind and persons? 
• Is this protection only motivated by the fear of the unknown—e.g., the possible consequences that neurotechnologies may have on our society—and by the current lack of knowledge? 

In any case, what is clear, here, is the twofold role of neurotechnologies: “Neuro-technology is developing powerful ways to treat serious diseases, to improve lifestyles and even, potentially, to enhance the human body. However, this progress is also associated with new self-understandings, existential challenges and problems never seen before” (Echarte 2016, 137). The bet we have to make concerns, then, both what we can gain and what we can lose: we could achieve qualitatively better lives but forgetting our vulnerability and losing our “image;” we could be better off, but we would lose the possibility of experiencing authentically. We need to evaluate if such a gamble is convenient and, above all, if it is authentically human.