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35Embodiment constraint: On how (not) to approach the possibility of consciousness in neural organoidsNeuroethics 19 (2): 23. 2026.Debates on the ethical status of disembodied neural organoids (DNOs) focus on whether, and when, precautionary principles should apply given the uncertain possibility of organoid consciousness. Some advocate applying precautionary principles to DNOs despite uncertainty; others deem such measures premature given current simplicity but foresee their future necessity; while more skeptical views hold that genuinely conscious DNOs remain too remote to warrant present ethical concern. By contrast, Cro…Read more
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14Pensamiento a la IntemperieLa Pollera Ediciones. 2025.¿Qué estudia la neuroética y por qué podemos considerarla una disciplina tan científica como filosófica? ¿Cómo puede la neurociencia ayudarnos a repensar la ética? ¿Es un problema que nuestros cerebros sean controlados algorítmicamente por la neurotecnología? ¿Podríamos desarrollarnos moralmente a partir de la alteración tecnológica de nuestros procesos cerebrales? ¿Cómo transformaría la sociedad una tecnología que permita acceder a la profundidad de cada experiencia y registrarla para la poster…Read more
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31A Situated Approach to Neurorights Legislation in ChileIn Pablo López-Silva (ed.), Contextualizing Neuroprotection: Latin American Perspectives on the Impact of Neurotechnological Development in Life and Society, Springer. pp. 177-193. 2025.Some have advocated for creating new fundamental neurorigths with universal validity such that national legislations worldwide should adapt to enforce them. Others have brought into question such a movement warning against rights inflation. We argue that we should avoid introducing new fundamental rights in any legal framework whenever possible. We call this the situated approach since whether it is possible to protect the mind without introducing new rights is a question that should be asked in…Read more
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43A Bidimensional Cognitive Ontology: The Role of Invariances in the Individuation of Mechanisms and Mental CapacitiesErkenntnis 1-26. forthcoming.A current problem in the philosophy of neuroscience consists in determining how to individuate cognitive capacities using neurobiological evidence. One recent proposal grounded on fundamental insights from mechanistic philosophy is an iterative strategy that cycles between neural mechanisms and cognitive capacities, using the former to individuate the latter and vice versa (Francken et al. Synthese, 200(5):378, 2022). However, this view cannot be applied to a fundamental aspect of research on co…Read more
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35El rol de la agencia en la identidad híbrida de los pacientes neurotecnológicosRevista de filosofía (Chile) 81 225-251. 2024.Recientemente, en la literatura sobre neuroética se ha analizado la integración entre neurotecnologías y ser humano desde la teoría de la mente extendida. La discusión se ha centrado en buscar dimensiones para evaluar la integración de los dispositivos en las funciones cognitivas de sus usuarios. Este enfoque ha tenido un relativo éxito en conceptualizar la paridad ética de los dispositivos respecto del cuerpo orgánico. Sin embargo, esta integración presenta al menos tres desafíos que no han sid…Read more
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50Mental Privacy as the Basis of Relational Identity and AutonomyRevista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 26 205-221. 2024.In recent years, different proposals articulate specific rights for the regulation of neurotechnology, also known as "neurorights". A central concern regarding neurotechnological applications is that of mental privacy. This is the idea that we should have control over access to our neural data and the information about our mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing them. After proposing a detailed conceptualization of mental privacy, I will argue that the protection of this ri…Read more
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99Neurotechnological Applications and the Protection of Mental Privacy: An Assessment of RisksNeuroethics 17 (2): 1-16. 2024.The concept of mental privacy can be defined as the principle that subjects should have control over the access to their own neural data and to the information about the mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing it. Our aim is to contribute to the current debate on mental privacy by identifying the main positions, articulating key assumptions and addressing central arguments. First, we map the different positions found in current literature. We distinguish between those who d…Read more
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105A healthcare approach to mental integrityJournal of Medical Ethics 50 (10): 664-669. 2024.The current human rights framework can shield people from many of the risks associated with neurotechnological applications. However, it has been argued that we need either to articulate new rights or reconceptualise existing ones in order to prevent some of these risks. In this paper, we would like to address the recent discussion about whether current reconceptualisations of the right to mental integrity identify an ethical dimension that is not covered by existing moral and/or legal rights. T…Read more
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84Neuroethics and cultural context: The case of electroconvulsive therapy in ArgentinaDeveloping World Bioethics 24 (3): 183-191. 2023.As neuroethics continues to grow as an established discipline, it has been charged with not being sufficiently sensitive to the way in which the identification, conceptualization, and management of the ethical issues raised by neuroscience and its applications are shaped by local systems of knowledge and structures. Recently there have been calls for explicit recognition of the role played by local cultural contexts and for the development of cross‐cultural methodologies that can facilitate mean…Read more
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153Minding Rights: Mapping Ethical and Legal Foundations of ‘Neurorights’Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32 (4): 461-481. 2023.The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty – often framed as “neurorights” in ethical, legal, and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including neurorights into their constitutional legal frameworks, and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Eur…Read more
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77Identifying Relational Applications of Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment Resistant DepressionReview of Philosophy and Psychology 15 (2): 499-521. 2024.The adaptive BCI known as ‘closed-loop deep brain stimulation’ (clDBS) is a device that stimulates the brain in order to prevent pathological neural activity and automatically adjusts stimulation levels based on computational algorithms that detect or predict those pathological processes. One of the prominent ethical concerns raised by clDBS is that, by inhibiting or modulating the undesirable neural states of a cognitive agent automatically, the device potentially undermines her autonomy. It ha…Read more
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46James Gross ha desarrollado una propuesta muy difundida según la cual la regulación emocional es un procesoreflexivo o de segundo orden que es diferente de las emociones. A su vez, Gross considera que esta propuesta esindependiente de qué teoría sobre las emociones uno adopte. En este trabajo discutoesta presunta independencia. En particular, sostengo queel enfoque evolutivo de Tooby y Cosmidestiene dos implicaciones respecto de la relación entre emoción y regulación emocional: los procesos comú…Read more
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87On the role of contextual factors in cognitive neuroscience experiments: a mechanistic approachSynthese 200 (5): 1-26. 2022.Experiments in cognitive neuroscience build a setup whose set of controlled stimuli and rules elicits a cognitive process in a participant. This setup requires researchers to decide the value of quite a few parameters along several dimensions. We call ‘’contextual factors’’ the parameters often assumed not to change the cognitive process elicited and are free to vary across the experiment’s repetitions. Against this assumption, empirical evidence shows that many of these contextual factors can s…Read more
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897The Global Neuronal Workspace as a broadcasting networkNetwork Neuroscience. 2022.A new strategy for moving forward in the characterization of the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) is proposed. According to Dehaene, Changeux and colleagues, broadcasting is the main function of the GNW. However, the dynamic network properties described by recent graph-theoretic GNW models are consistent with many large-scale communication processes that are different from broadcasting. We propose to apply a different graph-theoretic approach, originally developed for optimizing information disse…Read more
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728Is Mental Privacy a Component of Personal Identity?Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15 773441. 2021.One of the most prominent ethical concerns regarding emerging neurotechnologies is mental privacy. This is the idea that we should have control over access to our neural data and to the information about our mental processes and states that can be obtained by analyzing it. A key issue is whether this information needs more stringent protection than other kinds of personal information. I will articulate and support the view, underlying recent regulatory frameworks, that mental privacy requires a …Read more
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100Is Your Neural Data Part of Your Mind? Exploring the Conceptual Basis of Mental PrivacyMinds and Machines 32 (2): 395-415. 2022.It has been argued that neural data are an especially sensitive kind of personal information that could be used to undermine the control we should have over access to our mental states, and therefore need a stronger legal protection than other kinds of personal data. The Morningside Group, a global consortium of interdisciplinary experts advocating for the ethical use of neurotechnology, suggests achieving this by treating legally ND as a body organ. Although the proposal is currently shaping ND…Read more
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1190¿Cómo entender el vínculo entre censura y desarrollo emocional? Un caso de intercambio entre paideía platónica y neurociencia cognitivaRevista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 42 (1): 59-76. 2016.In the present article, we attempt to elucidate the conceptual rela- tionship between censorship and emotional development. We employ a framework from emotion regulation studies in order to clarify how censorship works and to ex- plain why it cannot affect emotional development in the same way as the remaining types of emotional regulation. Nevertheless, we argue that, by focusing on Plato’s ac- count of censorship, and specifically of its sociocultural function, one can find that it is not a us…Read more
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49Emotion Regulation as Emotion ModulationAnálisis Filosófico 39 (2): 143-162. 2019.Although the study of emotion regulation constitutes a thriving research field, there is still an ongoing debate about the very notion of emotion regulation. According to a popular approach, regulation is a second-order process which is different from (and modifies) emotion. This view has been challenged by the fact that emotion regulates itself through different feedback loops. Emotional feedback suggests that regulation may be a form of control (as defined in control theory). In this paper, I …Read more
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79Varieties of difference-makers: Considerations on chirimuuta’s approach to non-causal explanation in neuroscienceManuscrito 42 (1): 91-119. 2019.Causal approaches to explanation often assume that a model explains by describing features that make a difference regarding the phenomenon. Chirimuuta claims that this idea can be also used to understand non-causal explanation in computational neuroscience. She argues that mathematical principles that figure in efficient coding explanations are non-causal difference-makers. Although these principles cannot be causally altered, efficient coding models can be used to show how would the phenomenon …Read more
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25Defensa de la epistemología anti-suerte: en torno a la relación entre seguridad y habilidadRevista de filosofía (Chile) 72 183-200. 2016.
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125Using neural response properties to draw the distinction between modal and amodal representationsPhilosophical Psychology 32 (3): 301-331. 2019.Barsalou has recently argued against the strategy of identifying amodal neural representations by using their cross-modal responses (i.e., their responses to stimuli from different modalities). I agree that there are indeed modal structures that satisfy this “cross-modal response” criterion (CM), such as distributed and conjunctive modal representations. However, I argue that we can distinguish between modal and amodal structures by looking into differences in their cross-modal responses. A comp…Read more
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123Pluralistic MechanismTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 32 (2): 161-175. 2017.An argument recently proposed by Chirimuuta seems to motivate the rejection of the claims that every neurocognitive phenomenon can have a mechanistic explanation and that every neurocognitive explanation is mechanistic. In this paper, I focus on efficient coding models involving the so-called “canonical neural computations” and argue that although they imply some form of pluralism, they are compatible with two mechanistic generalizations: all neurocognitive explanations are mechanistic; and all …Read more
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37Defensa de la epistemología anti-suerte: en torno a la relación entre seguridad y habilidadRevista de Filosofía 72 183-200. 2016.Pritchard propone revitalizar el proyecto analítico para la noción de conocimiento: ofrecer una caracterización informativa y no circular de la misma. Cree que la clave es entender que las dos intuiciones centrales a esta noción imponen demandas independientes. Sostengo, por el contrario, la suficiencia de la condición anti-suerte. No solo respondo al argumento de Pritchard sino que desarrollo una línea alternativa inadvertida por él, pero implicada por supuestos suyos sobre la condición anti-su…Read more
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135An efficient coding approach to the debate on grounded cognitionSynthese 195 (12): 5245-5269. 2018.The debate between the amodal and the grounded views of cognition seems to be stuck. Their only substantial disagreement is about the vehicle or format of concepts. Amodal theorists reject the grounded claim that concepts are couched in the same modality-specific format as representations in sensory systems. The problem is that there is no clear characterization of format or its neural correlate. In order to make the disagreement empirically meaningful and move forward in the discussion we need …Read more
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67The Problem of Anti-Luck EpistemologyIdeas Y Valores 66 (165): 217-236. 2017.RESUMEN D. Pritchard ha sostenido que el conocimiento requiere la satisfacción de una condición de habilidad y una anti-suerte que no guardan relación de implicación entre sí. Se sostiene que la satisfacción de una condición anti-suerte implica cumplir con la condición de habilidad, primero, porque, las características centrales del caso de D. Pritchard en contra de esta implicación son compartidas con casos en los que hay habilidad; y segundo, el caso de A. Goldman del dios benevolente es más e…Read more
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66Habilidades anómalas. Una defensa de la epistemología anti-suerteTópicos 32 65-82. 2016.Pritchard sostiene que la condición de habilidad y la condición de seguridad le imponen demandas independientes al conocimiento, i.e., que la satisfacción de una no implica la satisfacción de la otra y que, por lo tanto, ninguna de ellas es suficiente por sí misma para ofrecer una caracterización adecuada de esta noción. Argumento, por el contrario, que no hay buenas razones para pensar que la condición de seguridad es insuficiente. Empleando algunos conceptos de Greco y Pritchard y Kallestrup p…Read more
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114A Defense of an Amodal Number SystemPhilosophies 3 (2): 13. 2018.It has been argued that the approximate number system (ANS) constitutes a problem for the grounded approach to cognition because it implies that some conceptual tasks are performed by non-perceptual systems. The ANS is considered non-perceptual mainly because it processes stimuli from different modalities. Jones (2015) has recently argued that this system has many features (such as being modular) which are characteristic of sensory systems. Additionally, he affirms that traditional sensory syste…Read more
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139A mechanistic perspective on canonical neural computationPhilosophical Psychology 30 (3): 209-230. 2017.Although it has been argued that mechanistic explanation is compatible with abstraction, there are still doubts about whether mechanism can account for the explanatory power of significant abstract models in computational neuroscience. Chirimuuta has recently claimed that models describing canonical neural computations must be evaluated using a non-mechanistic framework. I defend two claims regarding these models. First, I argue that their prevailing neurocognitive interpretation is mechanistic.…Read more
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80Information, Epistemic Luck and GeneralityEidos: Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad Del Norte 26 326-354. 2017.Resumen El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar la relevancia de la teoría informacional del conocimiento para el problema de la suerte epistémica. Argumento que el clásico enfoque de Dretske es equivalente a la condición de seguridad de Pritchard. Sin embargo, considero que esta manera de eludir la suerte epistémica exige lidiar con el llamado "problema de la generalidad". Argumento que una respuesta a este problema requiere una noción de seguridad diferente y propongo un enfoque informaciona…Read more
Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile
Areas of Specialization
| Neuroethics |
| Philosophy of Neuroscience |