Broadcast: Events

Abstract: I will begin my presentation with an introduction to recent calls for the necessity of safeguarding the mind within the framework of Neurorights (Ienca & Andorno, 2017; Yuste et al., 2017). Neurorights are a cluster of rights aiming at protecting our minds from harm, undue interference, and, in some cases, mental health. However, different authors and organisations have proposed various conceptions of these rights or have proposed that existing rights can be changed to better account for the ethical challenges posed by technologies capable of affecting our sense of self, identity, personality, thoughts, and desires. The first part of the presentation therefore aims to outline these varied arguments and propositions as myriad solutions to a common issue—how to protect our forum internum, or inner world, from the ethical issues that neurotechnologies may pose to individuals and society.

In the second part, I will focus on mental integrity (one of the proposed rights) and the focus of my own research. In this part of the presentation, I will first conceptualise mental integrity as it is most commonly envisioned in the literature. Following this introduction to mental integrity, I move on to my own (current, being developed) research, presenting my thoughts about the treatment versus enhancement debates as these relate to the discussion about mental integrity as a right to mental health, some current issues concerning autonomy that I am working on in relation to BCI devices and patients with Locked-In Syndrome.