Brain-Computer Interfaces and the Power to Define Mental States Open Access
Kao, Selina (Spring 2026)
Abstract
Brain-computer interfaces have advanced rapidly in recent years and have moved from experimental labs into workplaces, hospitals, and consumer products. These devices can now detect whether you are paying attention, decode fragments of what you are seeing, and even stimulate your brain when an algorithm decides something is wrong. But as they become more common, they bring a problem that has gone largely unexamined: a BCI does not just read the mind, it interprets it. When a device labels your neural activity as "distracted" or "at risk," that label is not a fact about your mental state. It is a judgment shaped by assumptions that engineers built into the system, and it can change how you understand yourself and how institutions treat you. This thesis argues that the real danger of brain-computer interfaces is not that they access the mind, but that they quietly take on the authority to say what the mind means. Drawing on hermeneutic philosophy and Kantian ethics, it shows that BCIs are interpretive systems that produce claims about cognition based on hidden design choices, and that when those systems begin replacing a person's own judgment with automated labels, they threaten the conditions that make genuine self-governance possible. It then turns to law and finds that existing legal frameworks, from the Fifth Amendment to private contract, protect against access to the mind but say almost nothing about who gets to define its meaning, which leaves a significant gap in how these technologies are regulated. The question this thesis asks is not whether the mind can be read, but who gets to decide what it says.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Hermeneutics of Cognitive Control
1.1 Decoding as Interpretation and Why Reading the Brain is Never Neutral
1.2 Hermeneutic Infrastructure and Cognitive Control
1.3 Why Mind/Body Separation is the Wrong Frame
1.4 Hermeneutic Responsibility and Ethics for BCIs
Chapter 2: The Autonomous Mind
2.1 Autonomy and Dignity: Why the Will Must Govern Itself
2.2 Freedom and Nature: The Two-Standpoints Solution
2.3 Kantian Heteronomy: When Technology Becomes External Legislation
2.4 Legal Examples as Case Studies
Chapter 3: Law and the Right to Mental Self-Determination
3.1 The Structure of Existing Law and its Limits for Neurotechnology
3.2 Neurotechnology and the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination
3.3 Private Ordering and the Contract of the Mind
Conclusion
Works Cited
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