Intrusive Intervention and Opacity Respect

I claim that coercive neuro-interventions on offenders violate requirements of respect. I explore this idea with reference to Ian Carter’s notion of ‘opacity respect’ – that is, the idea that a form of opacity that Carter calls ‘evaluative abstinence’ is a necessary feature of respect. I argue that opacity is a necessary part of relating to one another as equals. This is not to say that we should pursue ignorance, or even pretend it. As I interpret it, it is rather the claim that the respect structurally necessary to some inherently valuable form of human relations sometimes requires that we not acknowledge what we see, or could see. The demands of that way of relating to one another are therefore violated when we inquire into the interventions that would be necessary to alter someone’s behaviour for the better, and when we deploy the knowledge thus gained in subjecting them to a programme of behaviour-modification.