Flying Friars and Other Exceptions

Stephen Braude’s editorial “Does Telepathy Threaten Mental Privacy” speaks to one reason some people might resist accepting the reality of paranormal abilities. It is somewhat of a puzzle why so many otherwise rational people shy away from psi. If we accept telepathy, it might seem we’re exposed to others snooping on our innermost secrets and intentions. Deploying a distinction made by C. D. Broad between telepathic cognition and telepathic interaction, Braude argues that our fear of telepathic intrusion is greatly exaggerated. I, for example, often think of someone just before he or she calls on the phone. When that happens, I have no knowledge of what the caller is going to tell me, No cognition, just a bit of interaction. Telepathic connection doesn’t necessarily imply telepathic cognition. No danger of your hidden self being exposed in most common forms of telepathy. There are, however, some examples where it looks like real telepathic cognition comes into play. In the early stages of 17th century Joseph of Copertino’s career as a priest, his superiors had to ask Joseph to desist from calling the brothers out in public for every peccadillo they committed. In a typical example cited, he embarrassed a brother for thinking about eating cherries and other things while saying his prayers. His superiors urged Joseph to be more discreet and say things like—“you need to adjust your moral compass.” Joseph did learn to be more discreet but his Vita shows him repeatedly tuning into the specifics of other minds. For example, he was able to distinguish persons who came merely to observe him out of curiosity. Let me quote one sworn deposition from a Brother Francesco that illustrates telepathic cognition.

More Terminological Blunders

In my previous Editorial, I took a short detour from the main topic (telepathy and mental privacy) to comment briefly on one of the deeper flaws in the trendy, but seriously misguided, practice of replacing the terms “ESP” and “PK” with (respectively) “anomalous cognition” and “anomalous perturbation.” As I’ve discussed in great detail elsewhere (Braude, 2020), there’s actually quite a lot that’s wrong with this terminological folly. And it’s hardly the only time psi researchers have botched efforts to explicate or replace some of the field’s key concepts. The terminological error that I discussed in my earlier Editorial was the failure to accommodate the valuable distinction between ESP-cognition and ESP-interaction. And in that Editorial, I also noted that another, and increasingly trendy, practice likewise commits this error. It’s the strategy of abandoning the venerable arsenal of psi-terms and replacing them with a single expression—either “nonlocal awareness” or “nonlocal consciousness.” (The underlying rationale for this is usually that the traditional vocabulary is likely to be professionally toxic.) I’m thinking about these matters again because recent events have conspired to remind me of still another, but less trendy and prevalent, approach to parapsychological terminology that also deserves a few words of disapproval.

Does Telepathy Threaten Mental Privacy?

A long-standing concern (or at least a belief) about ESP, held by both skeptics and believers in the paranormal, is that if telepathy really occurs, then it might pose a threat to mental privacy. And it’s easy enough to see what motivates that view. Presumably we like to think that we enjoy privileged access to our own mental states. But if others could come to know telepathically what we’re thinking or feeling, then (among other disquieting prospects) that would mean that our sins of the heart and most embarrassing or repulsive fleeting thoughts would potentially be available for public inspection. But how well-founded is that belief or concern? To get a grip on the issues, we should begin by considering the valuable distinction (perhaps first mentioned by C.D. Broad--Broad, 1953, 1962) between telepathic (or clairvoyant) cognition and telepathic (or clairvoyant) interaction. As you would expect, every instance of the former would be an instance of the latter, but the converse doesn’t hold—that is, ESP interaction may occur without ESP cognition. To see why this matters, we must take a closer look. If telepathic cognition occurs at all, it would presumably be a form of non-sensorial knowledge about another individual’s state of mind. More specifically, it would be a state of affairs in which so-called “percipient” A comes to know something about a telepathic interaction A has with another individual B. And what kind of things might A telepathically come to know? Well, presumably, in its most robust (and most intrusively intimidating) form, A would learn what’s going on in B’s mind—that is, that B is having certain thoughts, perceptions, or emotions. But it would still be an instance of telepathic cognition—admittedly, less intimidating or threatening to one’s mental privacy—if A learned merely that B was the telepathic cause of A’s current thought or experience—that is, that B was directly influencing or interfering with A’s stream of consciousness, whether or not A’s resulting thoughts or experiences were those of B or known by A to be those of B.

Law Viewed Through the Lens of Neurointerventions

The development of modern diagnostic neuroimaging techniques led to discoveries about the human brain and mind that helped give rise to the field of neurolaw. This new interdisciplinary field has led analytic jurisprudence and philosophy of law in novel directions by providing an empirically informed platform from which scholars have reassessed topics such as mental privacy and self-determination, responsibility and its relationship to mental disorders, and the proper aims of criminal law. Similarly, the development of neurointervention techniques that promise to deliver new ways of altering people’s minds (by intervening in their brains) creates opportunities and challenges that raise important and rich conceptual, moral, jurisprudential, and scientific questions, and help us to tease apart analytic jurisprudence from synthetic jurisprudence. This volume advances the field of neurolaw by investigating issues raised by the development and use of neurointerventions (actual, proposed, and potential) to regulate human mental capacity, and those raised by the law’s regulation of the use of neurointerventions.

Judging the Secret Thoughts of All: Functional Neuroimaging, ‘Brain Reading’, and the Theological Ethics of Privacy

Of the many futuristic prospects offered by neuroscience, one of the more controversial is ‘brain reading’: the use of functional neuroimaging to gain information about subjects’ mental states or thoughts. This technology has various possible applications, including ‘neuromarketing’ and lie detection. Would such applications violate subjects’ privacy rights? Conversely, if God knows and judges all our secret thoughts, do Christians have any stake in defending a right to mental privacy? This article argues that God’s knowledge of us is different not only in degree but in kind from the knowledge sought through brain reading. This view of divine knowledge supports a theological account of privacy, richer and broader in scope than standard accounts of privacy rights, which can aid the ethical analysis of the use of brain reading technology for purposes such as marketing and lie detection.

Souled out of rights? – predicaments in protecting the human spirit in the age of neuromarketing

Modern neurotechnologies are rapidly infringing on conventional notions of human dignity and they are challenging what it means to be human. This article is a survey analysis of the future of the digital age, reflecting primarily on the effects of neurotechnology that violate universal human rights to dignity, self-determination, and privacy. In particular, this article focuses on neuromarketing to critically assess potentially negative social ramifications of under-regulated neurotechnological application. Possible solutions are critically evaluated, including the human rights claim to the ‘right to mental privacy’ and the suggestion of a new human right based on spiritual jurisdiction, where the human psyche is a legal space in a substantive legal setting.

Coercive neuroimaging, criminal law, and privacy: a European perspective

Different studies have shown that neuroimaging technologies can contribute to answering crucial legal questions of criminal law, generally regarding guilt, legal insanity and the risk of recidivism. However, the use of neuroimaging in criminal law also raises important legal questions. One of those questions is whether neuroimaging should be applied coercively to defendants and prisoners in light of privacy considerations. This paper examines this question regarding the European legal context. I argue that most neuroimaging applications yield data, which is, in terms of privacy sensitivity, no more sensitive than data acquired through current methods of criminal investigation, such as compulsory DNA testing. Therefore, I argue that some types of coercive neuroimaging will, in general and under certain specific conditions and safeguards, not contravene the right to privacy as set out in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I suggest that while on the one hand one could advocate the need for a novel, specific European human right to mental privacy, on the other hand, it is possible to argue that such a right may be superfluous in respect of the use of existing neuroimaging technologies.