Year: 2009
Type: editorial
Abstract: Ethicists and ordinary people are typically more worried by interventions that alter agents’ mind by directly altering their brains than interventions than are focused on the environment, and thereby indirectly change minds. I argue that the causal route to changing minds is not it- self important. Moreover, some of the most powerful techniques whereby behavior is altered without the consent or knowledge of agents involve environmental manipulations: manipula- tions of social space, for the benefit of those in the business of increasing consumption. I argue that insofar as we are fixated on internal interventions, we overlook ways in which our auton- omy as agents is impaired. Once we recognize the power of environmental manipulations, how- ever, we should come to see social space as a legitimate target for political control.
Author: Roberto Mordacci
Institution: Vita-Salute San Raffaele University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1924461346