[Paper Review] Minding rights: Mapping ethical and legal foundations of 'neurorights'

Sjors Ligthart, Marcello Ienca+18 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Feb 13, 2023

Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations28 citations

TL;DR

A multidisciplinary analysis that clarifies mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty as minimal conceptual foundations for neurorights to guide scholarly, legal, and policy discussions.

ABSTRACT

The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with AI-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty - often framed as 'neurorights' in ethical, legal and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including 'neurorights' into their constitutional legal frameworks and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, are taking an active interest in developing international policy and governance guidelines on this issue. However, in many discussions of 'neurorights' the philosophical assumptions, ethical frames of reference and legal interpretation are either not made explicit or are in conflict with each other. The aim of this multidisciplinary work here is to provide conceptual, ethical and legal foundations that allow for facilitating a common minimalist conceptual understanding of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty to facilitate scholarly, legal and policy discussions.

Motivation & Objective

• Clarify the conceptual foundations of neurorights (mental privacy, mental integrity, cognitive liberty).
• Provide a minimalist, common framework to align ethical, philosophical, and legal perspectives.
• Facilitate scholarly, legal, and policy discussions on neurotechnology governance.

Proposed method

• Perform a multidisciplinary synthesis of ethical, legal, and philosophical literature on neurorights.
• Map concepts across disciplines to establish a common minimal understanding.
• Identify potential conflicts or ambiguities in existing interpretations and provide clarifying foundations.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What are the essential ethical and legal foundations that underlie neurorights?
• RQ2 How can mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty be defined as minimal, interoperable concepts?
• RQ3 What challenges arise when integrating philosophical assumptions with legal interpretations of neurorights?
• RQ4 How can a common framework facilitate policy and governance discussions on neurotechnologies?

Key findings

• The work provides a minimal, common conceptual understanding of mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty for scholarly and policy discussions.
• It highlights that philosophical, ethical, and legal interpretations of neurorights often lack explicit alignment or may conflict.
• It offers a interdisciplinary mapping to support formulating legal and policy guidance on neurotechnologies.