Neurorights in Chile: Between neuroscience and legal science

Abstract

The paper is a critical review of the latest bills submitted to the Chilean Congress to legislate on so-called neuro-rights. The main purpose is to prove that, camouflaged behind philosophical and scientific simplifications, the bills lack the minimum justification requirements given by the Legisprudential theory. The idea of "neuro-rights" is based on an outdated "Cartesian reductionist" philosophical thesis, which advocates the need to create new rights in order to shield a specific part of the human body: the brain. Such legislation would obviously be redundant as the integrity of the human being (as a whole) is already safeguarded by the long-standing rights to privacy and to mental and physical integrity, which are part of most Western legislation.