Governing Mental-State Inference: Source-Neutral Regulatory Triggers and Tiered Obligations

Abstract

Two systems can supply the same person-linked attribution to the same institutional decision maker yet fall into different legal categories: one uses neural signals, the other text or behaviour. A source-bound rule therefore permits circumvention, while an all-purpose category of"mental data"risks treating fallible outputs as facts about the mind. This article reads the 2025 UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology as non-binding guidance and develops a source-neutral trigger for technologically mediated, person-linked mental-state attribution. Through selective critical synthesis, conceptual engineering, functional legal comparison, and matched counterfactual cases, it separates elicitation, attribution, and use as cumulative objects of regulation. The analysis also distinguishes two harm pathways from two independently assessed duty series. Seven ordered questions and two escalation predicates assign permitted practices to three duty tiers. Presumptive prohibition is reserved for materially autonomy-affecting non-consensual closed-loop intervention and for specified combinations of covert or coercive inference, core attributes, consequential decisions, and manipulation. Common entry does not erase source-related aggravators: invasiveness, embodiment, and closed-loop capacity can add duties or set a higher minimum, while consequential non-neural inference can reach the same tier. The resulting scheme is a classification device, not an empirically validated regulatory outcome.