In The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology, Nina A. Farahany explores the many dilemmas (legal, ethical, moral, biological and social) presented by the new reality of brain tracking and hacking — a reality that has already arrived and will continue to accelerate via advances in biotechnology. Given its potential to intrude upon an individual’s most basic sense of privacy, Farahany argues (and I strongly agree) that the time has come to codify freedom of thought as an absolute human right.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill emphasized the paramount importance of the individual’s personal consciousness:
But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person’s life and conduct which affects only himself, or, if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself, may affect others through…
