Programme on the Ethics of Behavioural Influence and Prediction
About the Programme
The Programme on the Ethics of Behavioural Influence and Prediction (EBIP) is based in the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. It investigates the moral permissibility and desirability of (i) predicting how people will behave, for example, on the basis of data about their past behaviour, demographic characteristics, and neurobiology, and (ii) influencing how people will behave, for example, through the use of nudges, incentives, psychological interventions, and psychopharmaceuticals.
Questions of interest include:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of algorithmic forms of behaviour prediction (as compared to discretionary approaches based on clinical/judicial judgement)?
What would an ideally fair behaviour prediction algorithm look like?
What sorts of data may permissibly be used as an input in to behaviour prediction algorithms? Demographic variables? Past behaviour? ‘Big data’? Biological factors?
Do machine learning approaches to behaviour prediction raise new ethical issues?
What are the ethical similarities and differences between biological and environmental forms of behavioural influence?
What are the ethically salient categories of behavioural influence? How useful, for ethical discussion, are the categories of nudging and manipulation?
Are there always reasons to prefer rationality-engaging over rationality-bypassing forms of behavioural influence?
Is there a right against nonconsensual behavioural influence (of certain kinds)?
Please see below for information regarding our funded research projects. We are also collaborating with Gerben Meynen and his team on his Law and Ethics of Neurotechnology in Criminal Justice (LENC) project.
Protecting Minds: The Right to Mental Integrity and the Ethics of Arational Influence
Though the right to bodily integrity is well-established, the possibility of a right to mental integrity has attracted little philosophical scrutiny. The purposes of this project, funded by a European Research Council Consolidator Award, are to (1) determine whether and how a moral right to mental integrity can be established; (2) develop an account of its scope, weight, and robustness, and (3) determine what forms of arational influence infringe it, and whether and when these might nevertheless be justified. The analysis will be applied to controversial novel forms of arational influence including persuasive digital technologies, salience-based nudges, treatments for childhood behavioural disorders, and biological interventions in criminal rehabilitation.
Unlike most traditional forms of behavioural influence, such as rational persuasion, incentivisation and coercion, many novel forms of behavioural influence operate at a subrational level, bypassing the targeted individual’s capacity to respond to reasons. Examples include bottomless newsfeeds, randomised rewards, and other ‘persuasive’ technologies employed by online platforms and computer game designers. They also include biological interventions, such as the use of drugs, nutritional supplements or non-invasive brain stimulation to facilitate criminal rehabilitation. The ethical acceptability of such arational influence depends crucially on whether we possess a moral right to mental integrity, and, if so, what kinds of mental interference it rules out. Unfortunately, these questions are yet to be addressed.
Neurointerventions in Crime Prevention: An Ethical Analysis
Interventions that act directly on the brain, or ‘neurointerventions’, are increasingly being used or advocated for crime prevention. For instance, drugs that attenuate sexual desire are sometimes used to prevent recidivism in sex offenders, while drug-based treatments for substance abuse have been used to reduce addiction-related offending.
Recent scientific developments suggest that the range of neurointerventions capable of preventing criminal offending may eventually expand to include, for example, drugs capable of reducing aggression or enhancing empathy.
In this Wellcome Trust-funded project, we investigated ethical questions raised by the use of such interventions to prevent criminal offending, focusing particularly on cases where they are imposed on convicted offenders as part of a criminal sentence or as a condition of parole.
On the one hand, there seems to be at least some reason to support the use of neurointerventions in this way, since there is a clear need for new means of preventing crime. Traditional means of crime prevention, such as incarceration, are frequently ineffective and can have serious negative side-effects; neurointervention may increasingly seem, and sometimes be, a more effective and humane alternative.
On the other hand, neurointerventions can be highly intrusive and may threaten fundamental human values, such as bodily integrity and freedom of thought. In addition, humanity has a track record of misguided and unwarrantedly coercive use of psychosurgery and other neurotechnological 'solutions' to criminality.
We deployed philosophical methods and recent thinking on autonomy, coercion, mental integrity and moral liability to examine when, if ever, the state may (1) impose neurointerventions on criminal offenders or (2) offer neurointerventions to criminal offenders?
People
Programme Researchers (OXFORD & ZURICH)
Tom Douglas - Principal Investigator, Professor of Applied Philosophy, Oxford
Gabriel De Marco - Research Fellow, Oxford
Lisa Forsberg - Research Fellow, Oxford
Thomas Mitchell - Research Fellow, Oxford
Peter Schaber - Professor of Applied Ethics, Zurich (UZH)
Holger Baumann - Research Fellow, Zurich (UZH)
Neil Levy - Professor of Philosophy, Oxford & Macquarie
AFFILIATED RESEARCHERS (Oxford)
Rebecca Brown - Research Fellow in Philosophy
Daniel D'Hotman - Doctoral Student, Medicine
Jessica Lorimer - Doctoral Student, Psychiatry
Jonathan Pugh - Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy
Viktor Savchenko - British Academy Research Fellow
EXternal Collaborators
Emma Dore-Horgan - Postdoctoral Researcher, VU Amsterdam
Nadira Faber - Director, Social Behaviour & Ethics Lab, Bremen & Oxford
Maximilian Kiener - Junior-Professor of Philosophy and Ethics in Technology, Hamburg University of Technology
Benjamin Lange - Junior Research Group Lead, LMU Munich
Muriel Leuenberger - Postdoctoral Researcher in Philosophy, Zurich (UZH)
Sjors Ligthart - Postdoctoral Researcher in Law, Utrecht; Assistant Professor in Law, Tilburg
Gerben Meynen - Professor of Ethics, VU Amsterdam; Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, Utrecht
Vera Tesink - PhD Candidate in Philosophy, VU Amsterdam
PAST Programme Researchers
Publications
Core publications
E Dore-Horgan, T Douglas, ‘Thinking What We Want: A Moral Right to Acquire Control over our Thoughts’, forthcoming in Blitz MJ, Bublitz JC (eds) The Law and Ethics of Freedom of Thought, Volume 2 (Palgrave)
V Tesink, T Douglas, L Forsberg, S Ligthart, and G Meynen, ‘Right to mental integrity and neurotechnologies: implications of the extended mind thesis’, Journal of Medical Ethics, published Online First 26 February 2024.
T Mitchell, T Douglas, ‘Wrongful Rational Persuasion Online’, published online, forthcoming in print in Philosophy & Technology.
M Kiener, T Douglas, ‘Neural Implants and the TRICK to Autonomy’, forthcoming in LaFollette (ed) Ethics in Practice, 6th edition (Wiley Blackwell).
G De Marco, J Simons, L Forsberg, and T Douglas, 'What Makes a Medical Intervention Invasive: A Reply to Commentaries', forthcoming in Journal of Medical Ethics.
T Douglas, ‘An Intuitive, Abductive Argument for a Right Against Mental Interference’, published online, forthcoming in print in Journal of Ethics.
G De Marco, T Douglas, L Forsberg, and J Savulescu, ‘On the Relative Intrusiveness of Physical and Chemical Restraints’, AJOB Neuroscience, 2024, 15:1, 26-28.
S Lucas, T Douglas, and N Faber, ‘How Moral Bioenhancement Affects Perceived Praiseworthiness’, Bioethics, 2024, 38:129–137.
H Read and T Douglas , ‘The Moral Permissibility of Perspective-Taking Interventions’, published online, forthcoming in print in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
V Tesink, T Douglas, L Forsberg, S Ligthart & G Meynen, ‘Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice: On the Scope of the Moral Right to Bodily Integrity’, Neuroethics 16, 26 (2023).
De Marco G*, Simons J*, Forsberg L, Douglas T, ‘What Makes a Medical Intervention Invasive?’, forthcoming in Journal of Medical Ethics (* joint first authors).
Ligthart S,…, Douglas T,…, Kellmeyer P, ‘Minding Rights: Mapping Ethical and Legal Foundations of ‘Neurorights’’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2023), 1-21; https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180123000245.
Ligthart S, Tesink V, Douglas T, Forsberg L, Meynen G, ‘The Normative Evaluation of Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice: From Invasiveness to Human Rights’, AJOB Neuroscience 14 (1):23-25 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2022.2150714.
Douglas T, ‘(When) Is Adblocking Wrong?’, in C Veliz (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2023).
De Marco G, ‘Manipulation, Machine Induction, and Bypassing’, Philosophical Studies 2022; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01906-2.
Ligthart S, Bublitz C, Douglas T, Forsberg L, and Meynen G, ‘Rethinking the Right to Freedom of Thought: A Multidisciplinary Perspective’, Human Rights Law Review 2022;22(4):1-14, https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngac028.
Douglas T, ‘If Nudges Treat Their Targets as Rational Agents, Nonconsensual Neurointerventions Can Too’, Ethical Practice and Moral Theory 2022, doi:10.1007/s10677-022-10285-w.
Douglas T, ‘The Mere Substitution Defence of Nudging Works for Neurointerventions Too’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 2022; doi:10.1111/japp.12568.
Ligthart S, Tesink V, Douglas T, Forsberg L, Meynen G, ‘The Normative Evaluation of Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice: From Invasiveness to Human Rights’, AJOB Neuroscience, forthcoming.
De Marco G, ‘Nonconsensual Neurocorrectives, Bypassing and Free Action’, Philosophical Studies 2021; doi:10.1007/s11098-021-01740-y.
Forsberg L, ‘Anti-libidinal Interventions and Human Rights’, Human Rights Law Review 2021; doi:10.1093/hrlr/ngab001.
De Marco G, Douglas T, ‘The Expressivist Objection to Neurocorrectives’, Criminal Law and Philosophy 2021, doi:10.1007/s11572-021-09566-9.
Davies B, Douglas T, ‘Learning to Discriminate: The Perfect Proxy Problem in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing’, in J Roberts, J Ryberg (eds), Principled Sentencing and Artificial Intelligence (forthcoming).
Birks D, ‘Paternalism as Punishment’, Utilitas 2020; doi:10.1017/S0953820820000254.
Forsberg L, Douglas T, ‘What is Criminal Rehabilitation?’, Criminal Law and Philosophy 2020; doi:10.1007/s11572-020-09547-4.
Van Toor D, Ligthart S, Kooijmans T, Meynen G, Douglas T (eds), Neurolaw: Ways forward for Neuroscience, Justice & Security (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Douglas T, Forsberg L, ‘Three Rationales for a Legal Right to Mental Integrity’ in D Van Toor, S Ligthart, T Kooijmans, T Douglas, G Meynen (eds), Neurolaw: Ways forward for Neuroscience, Justice & Security (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
De Marco G, Douglas T, ‘Technology to Prevent Criminal Behavior’, in D Edmonds (ed.), Future Morality (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Ligthart S, Meynen G, Douglas T, ‘Persuasive Technologies and the Right to Mental Liberty: The ‘Smart’ Rehabilitation of Criminal Offenders’ in M Ienca, O Pollicino, L Liguori, R Andorno, E Stefanini (eds), Cambridge Handbook of Information Technology, Life Sciences, and Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Douglas T, From Bodily Rights to Personal Rights, in A von Arnauld, K von der Decken, and M Susi (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of New Human Rights: Recognition, Novelty, Rhetoric (Canbridge University Press, 2020).
Ligthart S, Douglas T, Bublitz C, Kooijmans T and Meynen G, Forensic Brain-Reading and Mental Privacy in European Human Rights Law: Foundations and Challenges, Neuroethics 2020; doi:10.1007/s12152-020-09438-4.
Ligthart S, Kooijmans T, Douglas T, and Meynen G, Closed-Loop Brain Devices in Offender Rehabilitation: Autonomy, Human Rights, and Accountability, forthcoming in Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics; 30(4).
Douglas T, ‘Infection Control for Third-Party Benefit: Lessons from Criminal Justice’, Monash Bioethics Review 2020; 38(1): 17-31.
De Marco G, ‘Brain Interventions, Moral Responsibility, and Control over One’s Mental Life’, Neuroethics 2019; 12: 221-229.
Douglas T, ‘Is Preventive Detention Morally Worse than Quarantine?’, in JW de Keijser, JV Roberts, and J Ryberg (eds) Predictive Sentencing: Normative and Empirical Perspectives (Hart Publishing, 2019). [publisher website]
Douglas T, ‘Punishing Wrongs from the Distant Past’, Law and Philosophy 2019; 38(4): 335-358.
Douglas T, 'Enhancement & Desert', Politics, Philosophy & Economics 2019; 18(1): 3-22.
Ligthart S, Douglas T, Bublitz C, Meynen G, ‘The Future of Neuroethics and the Relevance of the Law', AJOB Neuroscience 2019; 10(3): 120-121. [publisher website]
De Marco G, ‘Review of Gideon Yaffe’s The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility’, Metapsychology Online 2019; 23(12).
Theofilopoulou A, 'Punishment as Moral Fortification and Non-Consensual Neurointerventions', Law and Philosophy 2019; 38(2): 149-167.
Zohny H, ‘Moral Enhancement and the Good Life’, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 2019; 22(2): 267-274.
Zohny H, Douglas T, Savulescu J, ‘Biomarkers for the Rich and Dangerous: Why We Ought to Extend Bioprediction and Bioprevention to White-Collar Crime’, Criminal Law and Philosophy 2019; 13(3): 479-497.
Douglas T, ‘Nonconsensual Neurocorrectives and Bodily Integrity: A Reply to Shaw and Barn’, Neuroethics 2019; 12(1): 107-118.
Douglas T, Zohny H, ‘The Negative Effects of Neurointerventions: Confusing Constitution and Causation’, AJOB Neuroscience 2018; 9(3): 162-164. [publisher website]
D’Hotman D, Pugh J, Douglas T, ‘When Is Coercive Methadone Therapy Justified?’, Bioethics 2018; 32(7): 405-413.
Birks D, 'How Wrong Is Paternalism?', Journal of Moral Philosophy 2018; 15(2): 136-163.
Pugh J, 'Moral Bio-Enhancement, Freedom, Value and the Parity Principle', Topoi 2019; 38(1): 73-86.
Birks D, ‘Can Neurointerventions Communicate Censure? (And So What If They Can’t?)’, in D Birks and T Douglas (eds.) Treatment For Crime (Oxford University Press, 2018): 351-368. [publisher website]
Douglas T, 'Neural and Environmental Modulation of Motivation: What's the Moral Difference?', in D Birks and T Douglas (eds.) Treatment for Crime (Oxford University Press, 2018). [publisher website]
Chew C, Faber N, Douglas T, ‘Biological Interventions for Crime Prevention’, in D Birks and T Douglas (eds.) Treatment for Crime (Oxford University Press, 2018). [publisher website]
Douglas T, Birks D, 'Introduction', in D Birks and T Douglas (eds.) Treatment for Crime (Oxford University Press, 2018). [publisher website]
Douglas T, ‘Going Above and Beneath the Call of Duty: The Luck Egalitarian Claims of Healthcare Heroes, and the Accommodation of Professionally-Motivated Treatment-Refusal’, Journal of Medical Ethics 2017; 43(12): 801-802.
Birks D, Douglas T, ‘Two Ways to Frustrate a Desire’, Journal of Value Inquiry 2017; 51(3): 417-434.
Douglas T, Pugh J, Singh I, Savulescu J, Fazel S, ‘Risk Assessment Tools in Criminal Justice and Forensic Psychiatry: The Need for Better Data’, European Psychiatry 2017; 42: 134-137.
Douglas T, ‘Refusing to Treat Sexual Dysfunction in Sex Offenders’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 2017; 26(1): 143-158. [journal version]
Pugh J, Maslen H, ‘Drugs That Make You Feel Bad’? Remorse-Based Mitigation and Neurointerventions’, Criminal Law and Philosophy 2017; 11(3):499-522. Discussed by The Hon. Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb DBE in the Annual Borderlands Lecture, section 70.
Forsberg L, Douglas T, ‘Anti-libidinal intervention in Sex Offenders: Medical or Correctional?’, Medical Law Review 2016; 24(4): 453-473.
D'Hotman D, Pugh J, Douglas T, ‘The Case Against Forced Methadone Detox in US Prisons’, Public Health Ethics 2019; 12(1): 89-93.
Douglas T, ‘Taking Drugs to Help Others’, in D Edmonds (ed.) Philosophers Take On the World (Oxford University Press, 2016). [publisher website]
Pugh J, Douglas T, ‘Justifications for Non-Consensual Medical Intervention: From Infectious Disease Control to Criminal Rehabilitation’, Criminal Justice Ethics 2016; 35(3): 205-229. [journal version]
Pugh J, Douglas T, ‘Neurointerventions as Criminal Rehabilitation: An Ethical Review’, in J J Jacobs and J Jackson (eds) Routledge Handbook of Criminal Justice (Routledge, 2016). [publisher website]
D'Hotman D, Pugh J, Douglas T, ‘Methadone for Prisoners’, The Lancet 2016; 387: 224.
Phillips EA, Rajender A, Brandon AF, Douglas T, Munarriz R, ‘Sex Offenders Seeking Treatment for Sexual Dysfunction—Ethics, Medicine, and the Law’, Journal of Sexual Medicine 2015; 12: 1591–1600.
Douglas T, ‘Criminal Rehabilitation through Medical Intervention: Moral Liability and the Right to Bodily Integrity’, Journal of Ethics 2014; 18(2): 101-122.
Douglas T, Bonte P, Focquaert F, Devolder K, Sterckx S, ‘Coercion, Incarceration and Chemical Castration: An Argument from Autonomy’, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 2013; 10(3): 395-405.
Some Related Work by Project Staff
Douglas T, 'Criteria for Assessing AI-Based Sentencing Algorithms: A Reply to Ryberg', published online, forthcoming in print in Philosophy & Technology
Douglas T, ‘A Pragmatic Argument for an Acceptance-Refusal Asymmetry in Competence Requirements’, Journal of Medical Ethics 2022; 48 (11): 799-800. [journal version]
De Marco G, Douglas T, Savulescu J, ‘Healthcare, Responsibility and Golden Opportunities’ Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2021; doi: 10.1007/s10677-021-10208-1.
Forsberg L, Douglas T ‘Moral Enhancement’, in Routledge Enclyclopedia of Philosophy (Taylor and Francis, 2021); doi:10.4324/9780415249126-L169-1.
Douglas T, Forsberg L, Pugh J, ‘Compulsory Medical Intervention versus External Constraint in Pandemic Control’, Journal of Medical Ethics 2020; doi:10.1136/medethics-2020-106435.
Forsberg L, Skelton A, ‘Achievement and Enhancement’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2019; 50(3): 322-338.
Douglas T, ‘The Morality of Moral Neuroenhancement’, in J Clausen and N Levy (eds) Handbook of Neuroethics (Springer, 2015): 1227-1249. [publisher website]
Douglas T, ‘Enhancing Moral Conformity and Enhancing Moral Worth’, Neuroethics 2014; 7(1): 75-91.
Pugh J, ‘Autonomy, Natality and Freedom: A Liberal Re-Examination of Habermas in the Enhancement Debate’, Bioethics 2014; 29(3):145-152.
Douglas T, ‘Enhancement, Biomedical’, in H LaFollette (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
Pugh J, Kahane J, and Savulescu J, ‘Cohen’s Conservatism and Human Enhancement’, The Journal of Ethics 2013; 17(4): 331–54.
Douglas T, ‘Moral Enhancement’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 2008; 25(3): 228-245.
Media
MEDIA ARTICLES
Douglas T, ‘Biased algorithms: here’s a more radical approach to creating fairness’, The Conversation, 21 January 2019.
Zohny H, ‘My Brain Made Me Carry Out a Ponzi Scheme’, Slate, 23 May 2018.
Douglas T, Douglas T, ‘Should a rapist get Viagra or a robber get a cataracts op?’, Aeon, 7 July 2017, .
Douglas T, ‘It’s not always wrong to pay people for their organs’, The Conversation, 8 June 2017, . Reprinted in The Independent 12 July 2017.
Pugh J, Why Is Chemical Castration Being Used on Sex Offenders in Some Countries?, The Conversation, 16 June 2016.
Television and radio appearances
Douglas T, Interviewed on the ethics of neurointerventions in crime prevention, ‘Nine to Noon’, Radio New Zealand National, aired 19 January 2015.
Douglas T, ‘The Ethics of Morality Altering Drugs’, Radio Interview, CBC Radio (Canada), 21 April 2011.
Podcasts
De Marco G, Manipulation, Bypassing, and Nonconsensual Neurocorrectives with Gabriel de Marco, podcast from The Free Will Show, 21 March 2022. [podcast website]
Douglas T, Refusing to Treat Sexual Dysfunction in Sex Offenders, podcast from the Conscience and Conscientious Objection in Healthcare Conference, 24 November 2015.
Pugh, J, Justifications for Non-Consensual Medical Treatments: From Infectious Disease Control to Criminal Rehabilitation - St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, 12th November 2015.
ONLINE VIDEOS
Ryberg J, Dr Jesper Ryberg discusses Neurointerventions, Crime and Punishment: how to prevent crime, video interview on the Practical Ethics YouTube Channel, 13 September 2019.
Douglas T, Dr Tom Douglas on anti-libidinal interventions for sex offenders, video interview on the Practical Ethics YouTube channel, 24 April 2018.
Douglas T, Dr Tom Douglas discusses neurointerventions in crime prevention, video interview on the Practical Ethics YouTube channel, 1 May 2017.
Public Policy
POLICY PAPERS
Douglas T, Davies B, Pugh J, Brown R, Hass B, Forsberg L, Mishra A, Singh I, Savulescu J, Fazel S. Algorithmic risk assessment tools in criminal justice: the need for better data. Evidence submission to the UK Justice and Home Affairs Committee, 5 September 2021.
Bublitz JC, Douglas T. Feedback on the Proposed EU Artificial Intelligence Act, European Commission F2665640, 6 August 2021.
Ballantyne A, Card R, Clarke S, Devolder K, Douglas T, Giubilini A, Kennett J, Milnes S, Minerva F, Mori M, Munthe C, Oakley J, Persson I, Savulescu J, Wilkinson D, Consensus Statement on Conscientious Objection in Healthcare, Practical Ethics: Ethics in the News 2016.