Protecting the Mind

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of philosophical, social, ethical, and legal challenges arising as a consequences of current advances in neurosciences and neurotechnology. It starts by offering an overview of fundamental concepts such as mental privacy, personal autonomy, mental integrity, and responsibility, among others. In turn, it discusses the influence of possible misuses or uncontrolled uses of neurotechnology on those concepts, and, more in general, on human rights and equality. Then, it makes some original proposals to deal with the main ethical, legal, and social problems associated to the use of neurotechnology, both in medicine and in everyday life, suggesting possible policies to protect privacy, neural data, and intimacy. Crossing the borders between humanities, natural sciences, bio-medicine, and engineering, and taking into account geographical and cultural differences, this book offers a conceptual debate around policy and decision making concerning some of the key neuroethical challenges of our times. It offers a comprehensive guide to the most important issues of neurojustice and neuroprotection, together with a set of new paradigms to face some of the most urgent neuroethical problems of our times.

Pablo López-Silva 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 López-Silva is MRes and PhD in Philosophy at the University of Manchester, UK. His areas of research are Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Psychology, Psychopathology, and Neuroethics.

Luca Valera is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Bioethics (School of Medicine), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Moreover, he is Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. He is Ph.D. in Bioethics at Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy. His areas of research are Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Technology, Bioethics, and Applied Ethics.