The Morality of the Mental

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The moral boundaries of the mind are increasingly on the philosophical and political agenda. Novel neurotechnologies promise us (or threaten us with-) the ability to directly ‘read’ the contents of, or ‘write’ into, the mind. Advertisers are increasingly able to discover and modify our beliefs and desires using sophisticated algorithmic techniques for managing attention. These new technologies raise old ethical problems – people have been interpreting, and influencing, each other, as long as there have been people. This class asks about the ethics and politics of this sort of mental traffic, in cases of high technology and low. We will ask questions like: do we have a right to mental integrity that is akin to (/identical with; /derived from) our right to bodily integrity? Are there ways that liberty of thought might stand in tension with the legitimate interests of others, in how they are thought of, and if so how should these tensions be resolved? How, if at all, should these rights be realized in law, interpersonal morality, or other social practices?