Extended Mind Over Matter: Privacy Protection Is the Sine Qua Non

Abstract

Palermos’s (2023) concept of “mental data” is appreciated as advancing fresh considerations in urgent discourse on mental privacy. However, it is suggested that the proposal for an ontologically distinct category of mental data as currently drafted is nongenerative of novel privacy measures. I agree that mind-related data pose nascent risks—but not because they constitute part of the mind. This commentary argues that recognizing mental constituents apropos the Extended Mind Thesis (Clark and Chalmers 1998) is arbitrary for the interests of privacy, which are independent of the ontological status of mind-sensitive content. It is enough that data represent minds to elicit concern, to the conclusion that the Extended Mind Thesis is normatively inert with respect to motivating legal revision. Nevertheless, I support the appeal for technological protections, and suggest that a reformulated version of mental data might hold promise for mental privacy approaches. The Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) posits that human mental states and processes are not confined to a person’s physical boundaries, but can reach into the environment to be realized in external artifacts. Palermos (2023) argues that if the EMT is correct, informational content derived from cognitively integrated applications counts as part of the mind and can be regarded as “mental data,” and that this generates novel privacy considerations. I suggest this paradigm is unserviceable for the purpose of legal and ethical revision as Palermos claims, for the reason that there are morally relevant differences between data types that the concept of mental data fails to distinguish. These materialize in the two following ways. First, mental data neglect normative features of attendant data types. As long as agent and artifact comprise a mutually coupled system, mental data describe both synchronous and non-occurrent information regardless of medium. By the received view, the latter condition holds that mental contents extend to “uncoupled peripherals,” which would mean that non-occurrent mental data have long been stored in analogue formats (e.g., the proverbial “paper trail”), and more recently in digital systems. But unlike outmoded predecessors, contemporary data types that have emerged with the advent of digital technology present new, morally relevant aspects. To wit: Digital platforms enable the mass storage, transfer, collection, and dissemination of content on a scale unprecedented. This brings with it obvious privacy concerns that do not apply, or only partially apply, to traditional media. Simply put, material data sources are saddled with access and transmissibility limits in comparison to digital formats, and the only practical means of overriding these constraints is digitization. What this indicates is that normatively germane distinctions exist between certain kinds of mental data. However, such variations are independent of whether or not one accepts the EMT. That is because the EMT integrates both digital and analogue content coextensively—meaning that the term “mental data” is applied to both pen-and-paper and keypad-and-processor indiscriminately. In other words, further categorization is needed to point to the morally salient features of mental data types because the EMT doesn’t get us any further toward identifying what is of normative significance. What actually prompts fresh ethical concerns is not the acknowledgment that minds extend into the environment, but that personal data about minds now extend into the digital multiverse. The principle issue is therefore one of mental privacy with respect to digital data. With that stated, mental data raise a further concern that warrants attention. A second consideration is that endorsement of the EMT would omit types of informational content about minds that seem apt for the title of mental data. Under the EMT, a condition for mind-constituting artifacts is that they are coupled with an agent in a bidirectional process of causal effect. Minds do not