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Mind Reading, Lie Detection, and Privacy

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Handbook of Neuroethics

Abstract

Neuroimaging techniques can generate a variety of kinds of personal information. This chapter focuses on the potential for neuroimaging to threaten privacy by revealing mental content and discusses the scientific and ethical issues that should be considered in a neuroethical analysis of neuroimaging that may infringe on privacy. Here these considerations are illustrated with a discussion of the scientific and ethical issues that arise when trying to use neuroimaging technologies for lie detection in real-world applications. Although current methods do not significantly threaten mental privacy, it is possible that privacy rights could be infringed with further developments in neuroimaging. However, this area is highly undertheorized; more work on the foundations of the right to privacy is needed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be noted that this is already possible to achieve with behavioral tests. Moreover, it is not clear that this information tells us anything about how a person will act in a certain situation. The biases, even if real, could be counteracted by other processes and never affect decision or action.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College, HB 6035, Office 207B Thornton Hall, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Adina L. Roskies

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  1. Adina L. Roskies
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Correspondence to Adina L. Roskies .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Jens Clausen

  2. The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Neil Levy

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Roskies, A.L. (2015). Mind Reading, Lie Detection, and Privacy. In: Clausen, J., Levy, N. (eds) Handbook of Neuroethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4707-4_123

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4707-4_123

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