Abstract

Ignorance theorists about privacy hold that it amounts to others’ ignorance of one’s personal information. I argue that ignorance theorists should adopt a distributive reductionist approach to the right to privacy, according to which it is reducible to elements that, despite having something significant in common, are distributed across more fundamental rights to person, liberty, and property. The distributed reductionism that I present carries two important features. First, it is better suited than its competitors to explain a sense of scatter that many have about the right to privacy. Second, it warrants caution about claims to the effect that the right to privacy is sharply to be distinguished from such rights as the right to liberty and the right to property