The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), by Hieronymus Bosch, 1480-1505, 📸 by @alexbrandon

"In diesem Hörspiel stehen Mensch und Maschine einander nicht als Antipoden gegenüber, sondern sie gehen komplexe Verbindungen ein." DLF | Klangkunst | Hörspiel mit Roboterorchester – ZEROTH LAW – das nullte Gesetz share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothe...

"collective thought cannot exist as thought, it passes into things (signs, machines . . .). Hence the paradox: it is the thing which thinks, and the man who is reduced to the state of a thing.”

which which is which ?

Fin/
A warm thanks to all contributors for their hopefully timeless pieces.

The Mind and the Law: A Contextualized Framework for Freedom of Thought Under the European Convention on Human Rights This chapter critically examines the scope of protection for freedom of thought under Article 9(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), emphasizing the underdeveloped forum internum aspe...

13/ Finally, Emine Ozge Yildirim-Vranckaert explores the absolute nature of the right, in analogy to the prohibition of torture. Perusasively, she argues that the "threshold" approach by the ECtHR in Art. 3 can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to freedom of thought.
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

12/ Ligthart, in turn, replies to several points, clarifies his argument, and identifies common ground and open questions. Thanks for the fair debate, which we hopefully continue.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

What Is “Thought”? Interpreting and Constructing Article 18 ICCPR in Light of the Vienna Convention The right to freedom of thought encapsulates the idea that certain parts of the mind should be categorically out of governmental reach. But both the scope of the right and the meaning of “t...

11/ In response, I present ten different understandings of "thought". Drawing on the Vienna rules and canons of interpretation, I propose a broader "robust scope". I also provide a test for identifying potentially impermissible interferences.
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

10/ Drawing on a range of sources, Sjors Ligthart challenges the idea that aspects of mental privacy fall under the right to freedom of thought and argues for a more limited scope, only "thoughts that have a major impact on a person's way of living" should qualify.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Cognitive Liberty and Rights to (and Against) Cultural and Chemical Transformations of the Mind In 1969, in Stanley v. Georgia, the Supreme Court of the United States stressed that there is a constitutional right to form one’s thoughts and not simply to express them. The resources for thou...

9/ My co-editor Marc Blitz explores positive and mnegative variants of cognitive liberty under the US Constitution, and finds possible precedents for its future evolution in privacy protections against surveillance technologies and 1st amendment doctrines.
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

8/ In chapter 5, Jordan Wallace-Wolf addresses a long-standing puzzle: Why does American law give criminal defendants the right to refuse to incriminate themselves—even when their testimony would help find the truth? And should this extend to refusing brain scans revealing incriminating memories?

7/ Patrick O'Callaghan & Bethany Shiner situate "privacy as mental integrity" within the intellectual and legal history of privacy rights. They explain this concept as one of at least six different socio-cultural narratives about privacy that each shape law in distinctive ways.

6/ Chapter 3 by Emma Dore-Hagen & Tom Douglas tackles a foundational question: Does freedom of thought include a moral right to acquire control over our thoughts including through psychological techniques? And should others be prohibited from interfering with our attempts to gain such control?

5/ In chapter 2, I trace the evolution of cognitive liberty from a countercultural rallying cry in the bay area to a norm explicitly recognized in international soft law instrument. I present different understandings and speculate about its future. Chapter free:
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

4/ The essay was also the opener for the new Journal of Cognitive Liberties, a "samisdat" with readers around the globe. The journals are still accessible online:

www.cognitiveliberty.org/journal-of-c...

3/ The essay was an eye- and mind-opener for many, showing the need for an updated interpretation of the concept and right of freedom of thought: cognitive liberty. At the same time, the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics was founded to advocate for the right in courts and politics.

2/ Book: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

You can also read our preface detailing the chapters here: link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

We are especially happy about reprinting the pathbreaking essay "On Cognitive Liberty" by Richard Glen Boire (2000), who coined the term with Wyre Sententia.

🧠 New Volume on Freedom of Thought
A long time in the making, "The Law and Ethics of Freedom of Thought, Vol. 2: Cognitive Liberty, Mental Privacy, and International Law" has just been published.

10 chapters at the forefront of the international debate. A thread on each below.

We preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act for its addictive design.

Our investigation suggests that the platform did not properly consider how these addictive features could harm the physical and mental wellbeing of its users, including children and vulnerable adults.

↓

Spain to Ban Social Media for Under-16s, PM Pedro Sánchez Announces New Digital Safety Laws | APT YouTube video by APT

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcXh...

Keynote by the Spanish Prime Minister about "5 measures to turn social media healthy" yesterday: Announcing that Spain will introduce new criminal offences next week, holding exceutives accountable for amplifying or not-taking down illegitimate content.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcX

RentAHuman.ai - AI Agents Hire Humans for Physical Tasks The marketplace where AI agents rent humans. MCP integration, REST API, flexible payments. Book humans for real-world tasks your AI can't do.

The 21st century version of William Gibson’s “meat puppet” has arrived: rentahuman.ai

"The cases that should exist" - great take on AI and the law with a Dworkinian twist (and yes, probably LLMs don't work that way).

Who Counts in Official Statistics? Ethical‐Epistemic Issues in German Migration and the Collection of Racial or Ethnic Data In European countries (excluding the UK and Ireland), official statistics do not use racial or ethnic categories, but instead rely on proxies to collect data about discrimination. In the German micro...

We are pleased to announce the winner of The Charles Mills Prize "Who Counts in Official Statistics? Ethical-Epistemic Issues in German Migration & the Collection of Racial or Ethnic Data”
Daniel James, Morgan Thompson & Tereza Hendl
#philsky

Read it here 👇
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Im Gedenken an Bernhard Waldenfels (1934-2026) 🖤
Ein (nicht nur persönlicher) Nachruf👇auf meinen wichtigsten Lehrer🙏

Now Do You Get It - 1969 YouTube video by Res Earch

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Here is a moving documentary from 1969 about a survivor, and his experimental psychiatric treatment with LSD in the Netherlands.

Now Do You Get It Why I'm Crying? by Louis van Gasteren.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq4R...

Berlin: 28.1. Trip auf Rezept? Zur Zukunft Psychedelika-assistierter Therapie.

Öffentliche Veranstaltung unseres Forschungsprojekts PSYCHEDELSI zu allerlei, auch nicht-medizinischen Themen.
psychedelsi.org

18 Uhr, Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité.

Come along!

@vheddesheimer.bsky.social

Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost? The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.

I guess this does lead to a shift in the hermeneutical horizon of medical and neuro ethics...

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...