The Inalienable Thought: A Juridico-Philosophical Foundation for the Inalienability of Undisclosed Thought and Cognitive Trajectory

This document provides the legal and philosophical foundation for the proposed recognition of a distinct fundamental right, here named the Inalienable Thought: the inalienability of undisclosed thought and cognitive trajectory. The concrete protected object is designated the ThoughtLine—the continuous and identifiable origin, formation, selection and development of a person’s ideation. The proposal addresses a technological vulnerability created by artificial-intelligence-mediated interaction: the capacity to infer, extract and reconstruct, from accumulated prompts, corrections, rejected alternatives, contextual memory, evaluations and decision sequences, not merely what a person has expressed, but the generative process through which that person thinks. Such reconstruction may enable cognitive distillation and the construction of a functional cognitive substitute or personal digital twin without requiring access to the nervous system. The document distinguishes cognitive appropriation from manipulation, persuasion and the existing neurorights framework. It examines the limits of privacy, data protection and intellectual-property law, grounds the proposed right in human dignity, reason, conscience, freedom of thought and the status of the person as a subject, and defines the non-waivable core of the protection. It also develops a distinct institutional extension. An institutional ThoughtLine is generated through the coordinated cognitive activity of identifiable natural persons and is protected, without prejudice to contributor rights, through a composite legal basis including personal rights, property, trade-secret protection, contractual autonomy, fair competition, cybersecurity and economic self-determination. This record constitutes the first formally deposited version of the work and is released as a restricted review edition pending final legal, terminological and editorial consolidation. This is an independent scholarly and normative proposal. It is not an official document or endorsed position of the European Union, the United Nations or any governmental institution.