Mental integrity is a neuroright that protects against manipulative inscription into mental processes. It is the counterpart to mental privacy: there the concern is protection against unlawful read-out, here protection against unlawful inscription. The inscription can occur directly — through electrical brain stimulation, through BCI-mediated inputs — or indirectly through neuromarketing, emotion-targeting, algorithmic affect modulation, and targeted micro-steering of attention.
In personhood-ontological terms, the right is anchored in personal autonomy: the person is not material for the shaping of others, but the bearer of their own free self-determination. Whoever manipulates mental processes without the consent of the bearer treats the person as an object — and thereby violates the Personalist Norm.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Neuroright; related to: bodily integrity, the right to free formation of the will.
Three forms of inscription
Direct stimulation — through implanted or transcranial stimulation devices, neuronal activity can be modulated and thereby mood, attention, and behavior influenced. Used therapeutically (deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease and severe obsessive-compulsive disorders), the application is legally recognized; manipulation without consent or for non-therapeutic purposes is clearly unlawful.
Indirect affect modulation — algorithmic systems (social-media feeds, recommendation engines, advertising platforms) systematically modulate attention and thereby the emotional states of users. The question of how far mental integrity is violated here is contested. The UNESCO Recommendation 2025 takes an extensive position as soon as the manipulation is systematic and intentional.
Neuromarketing and persuasion technique — targeted conditioning of consumer decisions while circumventing conscious judgment. The EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(a), already prohibits “subliminal, manipulative or deceptive techniques” that materially impair the capacity for informed decisions.
Personhood-ontological grounding
Mental integrity is anchored personalistically in the subject quality of the person — in the fact that the person is not material for the shaping of others, but the bearer of their own self-determination. Three ontological arguments support the level of protection:
First argument — the person as subject, not object. The Personalist Norm (Wojtyła, The Acting Person) forbids treating the person as a means to an alien end. Whoever manipulates mental processes without consent treats the interior of the person as material for their own purposes. This is the fundamental violation of the Personalist Norm — not a mere violation of a data right.
Second argument — protection of free will. Free will presupposes that the conditions of its exercise are not manipulatively preformed. Where emotion-targeting, subliminal messages, or neuromodulatory interventions structurally shift the affective situation, the subsequent “act of will” is indeed still formally an act of the person, but materially runs along externally posited tracks. Mental integrity protects substantial freedom, not merely formal freedom.
Third argument — preservation of the identity of enactment. The person realizes themselves in their concrete acts (deutera energeia). When these acts are systematically modulated in a manipulative way, a split arises between the person who enacts themselves and the external modulation that in fact steers the enactments. This is not physical injury, but structural alienation of the person — the personalist tradition knows it as a form of diminishment of dignity, even when the person does not subjectively notice it at all.
The case of emotion-targeting
The express prohibition of emotion recognition in the workplace and in educational institutions (EU AI Act, Article 5(1)(f), applicable since 2 February 2025) protects not only mental privacy against read-out — it also protects mental integrity against the inscription that builds upon it. Whoever can capture the emotional state of an employee can also steer it in a targeted way; to prohibit the one without the other would be incomplete.
Therapeutic exceptions
As with mental privacy, clear therapeutic exceptions exist. Deep brain stimulation in pharmacologically refractory conditions, transcranial magnetic stimulation in severe depression, BCI-mediated stimulation in rehabilitation — all of these presuppose the express, prior, and revocable consent of the patient. Within these conditions they do not violate mental integrity, but serve its restitution.
Methodological note
The boundary between legitimate influence (education, argument, advertising in the classical sense) and illegitimate manipulation is not defined by effectiveness, but by truthfulness and respect for the power of judgment. Advertising that argues respects the power of judgment, even when it is persuasive. Advertising that manipulates subliminally or in a targeted way through captured emotion data circumvents the power of judgment and thereby violates mental integrity.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- UNESCO (2025): Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology.
- European Union (2024): Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act), Art. 5(1)(a) and (1)(f).
- Ienca, M. & Andorno, R. (2017): Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology. Life Sciences, Society and Policy 13: 5.
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969/1979): The Acting Person. Dordrecht: Reidel.
See also
Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.