A Working Account of the Right Against Mental Interference

Abstract In this chapter, Douglas offers a schematic, tentative, incomplete, and metaphysically ecumenical working account of mental interference, and of the right against it. The account is intended both to capture at least a part of the right against mental interference that is present in common-sense morality and to parallel the account of the right against bodily interference offered in Chapter 2. On Douglas’ account, interfering with a person’s mind consists in altering their mental states via a mediating process, in the person, that is insensitive to the reasons that bear on the alteration. And the interference infringes the right against bodily interference when it is significant, performed on a person who possesses the right and has not waived or forfeited in relation to the interference in question, and performed by what Douglas calls a ‘well-situated moral agent’. Douglas ends the chapter by relating the right against mental interference to two cognate rights that have made frequent appearances in the recent literature: the right against mental manipulation, and the right to freedom of thought.