Subjectivity as origin-tracking: a structural account of individuation
Synthese March 23, 2026 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1007/s11229-026-05533-w via Springer Nature
Summary
The study proposes a structural account of selfhood that moves beyond traditional views focused on content, suggesting that individuation arises from an organizational mechanism called origin-tracking. This mechanism differentiates between self-generated and externally generated events, facilitating perception and action without relying on representational content. It presents minimal selfhood and first-person thought as complementary aspects of a deeper architectural asymmetry, explaining the unity of agency and selfhood while addressing both fragility in pathological cases and continuity over time.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | Individuation arises from an organizational mechanism called origin-tracking, which differentiates self-generated from externally generated events. |
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Abstract
Debates on selfhood typically locate its basis either in the minimal experiential structure of consciousness or in the representational mechanisms underlying de se thought. Both approaches treat selfhood as a matter of content—phenomenal or conceptual—and thus overlook the organizational conditions that make such content possible. I argue that neither the lived “for-me-ness” emphasized in phenomenology nor the first-person mode of presentation emphasized in analytic philosophy can ground individuation, since each presupposes an antecedent asymmetry already built into the system’s architecture. I develop an alternative account in terms of origin-tracking: a structural invariant through which a system differentiates self-generated from externally generated events and coordinates perception, action, and integration around a privileged standpoint. Origin-tracking is not representational but organizational; it individuates the subject by establishing the conditions under which perspectival experience and de se representation can arise. Minimal selfhood and first-person thought emerge as complementary expressions of the same architectural asymmetry rather than as its source. This structural account clarifies the unity of agency, pre-reflective selfhood, and first-person cognition without positing a substantial ego or higher-order representation, and it explains both the fragility of subjectivity in pathological cases and the continuity of the subject across time.