The Subject as a Process of Stabilizing Experience

From Entity to Function

If the fixed subject proves to be a redundant explanation, this does not mean that the concept of the subject should be eliminated. What must be eliminated is not the concept itself, but its substantialist interpretation. The subject does not have to be thought of as an inner object, a hidden observer, or an unchanging bearer of experiences. It can be defined functionally: through the work without which experience would not be maintained as connected, self-related, and capable of continuing through change.

The minimal formula is this: the subject is a process of maintaining the coherence of experience. This formula does not assert a new entity. It does not say that there exists within experience a special object called the subject. It says that a number of processes must somehow maintain experience in a state of sufficient connectedness: so that experiences can be distinguished, actions can be included in a history, memory can be related to the present, and changes do not turn into the complete disintegration of self-reference.

A functional definition changes the direction of analysis. Instead of the question "what is the subject?" the question becomes "what organization of experience performs the subject function?" This shift makes it possible to preserve the reality of subjectivity without introducing an inner center as a separate explanatory principle. Subjectivity remains an object of analysis, but its unity is no longer accepted as an initial given. It becomes what has to be explained.

This position is close to anti-substantialist approaches to the self, but it does not fully coincide with them. Self-model theory shows that self-experience does not require a substantial I and may be connected with structures of modeling (Metzinger, 2003). However, the minimal model of the subject does not reduce the subject only to the self-model. The self-model explains an important aspect of self-organization, but maintaining the coherence of experience also includes attention, memory, bodily states, language, meaning, action, and external supports.

Scheme 1. General Model of the Stabilization of Experience

The scheme fixes the subject as a process of maintaining the coherence of multilevel experience and shows the main lines of stabilization, rupture, and possible reconfiguration.

What "Maintaining" Means

The word "maintaining" should not be understood as rigid fixation. To maintain experience does not mean to stop change, suppress divergences, or preserve one and the same form of self-description at any cost. Maintaining means supporting minimal connectedness, in which different elements of experience can remain related: sensation to action, action to motive, motive to memory, memory to history, and history to the possibility of further change.

Such maintaining may be stable, partial, conflictual, or temporary. A person may preserve self-reference even in a state of internal divergence. One may fail to understand one's own motives and still try to connect them into an intelligible sequence. One may undergo a crisis of identity and still continue to hold the question "what is happening to me?" as a form of minimal connectedness. The subject function therefore does not require the complete harmony of experience. It requires only that level of coherence at which experience can still be organized, revised, and continued.

Maintaining is also not a purely conscious act. A significant part of this work takes place before explicit reflection or outside it. Bodily orientation, affective background, habits of attention, implicit memory, and social expectations already structure what can later be called "my" experience. Bodily approaches to consciousness show that self-experience is connected not only with thought, but also with organismic regulation, emotion, and the feeling of what happens (Damasio, 1999). For the minimal model, this means that the subject cannot be identified with a conscious commentary on experience.

Maintaining is not the simple preservation of the past either. It includes selection, reconstruction, and the redistribution of significance. Memory does not simply supply material for identity; it participates in how the past becomes part of the present. Language does not simply describe an already finished experience; it helps to distinguish and connect it. Meaning is not simply added to events; it determines which events enter the structure of life as significant. Maintaining coherence is therefore always a dynamic process.

What "Coherence" Means

The coherence of experience is not the same as inner unity without contradiction. If coherence is understood as complete non-contradiction, the model immediately becomes implausible: human experience almost always contains divergences among desire, action, self-description, bodily reaction, and social role. Coherence means not the absence of divergences, but the possibility of connecting them within some structure.

Minimal coherence exists where elements of experience do not disintegrate into completely unconnectable fragments. A person may say: "I do not understand why I react this way," and this sentence already maintains a connection among the reaction, the question, memory, and the attempt at self-description. One may acknowledge a contradiction: "I want this and at the same time I am afraid of it." Such acknowledgment does not eliminate the divergence, but it makes it part of experience that can be organized.

Coherence has several levels. At the bodily level, it appears in orientation, tension, readiness for action, and the sense of presence. At the affective level, it appears in stable emotional evaluations. At the cognitive level, it appears in expectations, distinctions, and explanations. At the narrative level, it appears in the capacity to include events in a history. At the social level, it appears in recognition, role, name, responsibility, and communication. The distinction between minimal and narrative selfhood shows that subjectivity is not exhausted by a single level of self-description (Gallagher, 2000).

These levels may fail to coincide. A person may assert one thing in language, react differently bodily, return through memory to a third thing, and socially perform a fourth role. Coherence therefore should not be understood as a pre-given order. It is a task of organization. The subject function consists not in eliminating all divergences, but in maintaining them in a form available for further distinction, action, and reconfiguration.

Experience as the Object of Stabilization

The minimal model of the subject is impossible without clarifying what exactly is stabilized. What is stabilized is not "consciousness" in a narrow sense and not only a stream of thoughts. What is stabilized is experience as a multilevel field: bodily sensations, emotions, perceptions, memory, expectations, actions, language, social relations, traces of the past, and external supports. If experience is limited only to conscious content, the subject is once again mistakenly placed in the domain of inner observation.

Experience is not passive material that then receives form from a ready-made subject. Rather, the subject function arises within the organization of experience itself. An experience becomes "mine" not because it has been appropriated by an inner owner, but because it is included in a system of relations: with the body, memory, attention, language, action, and history. These relations are what make it possible to distinguish what is merely happening from what is happening to me.

This understanding brings the minimal model close to lines of embodied and enactive cognition, where cognition is not separated from body, action, and environment (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). Yet what matters here is not to transfer another theoretical framework in its entirety, but to fix a basic constraint: the subject should not be described as an isolated inner point. Its function is distributed across processes of organizing experience, some of which are bodily, some linguistic, some social, and some connected with external structures.

It follows from this that the subject cannot be sought in one place. It does not coincide only with the brain, only with narrative, only with the body, only with language, or only with the self-model. Each of these levels may participate in maintaining coherence, but none of them exhausts the subject function. The minimal model remains minimal precisely because it does not turn one mechanism into the complete essence of the subject.

The Subject as a Process, Not an Object

A processual understanding of the subject requires caution: the word "process" too may quietly become a new name for an entity. To prevent this, process must be understood operationally. It does not exist separately from the operations through which experience is maintained as connected. There is no subject over and above attention, memory, bodily orientation, language, action, and self-reference. But there is a certain organization of these processes through which the subject function arises.

A process differs from an object in that it is not preserved as a ready-made thing through change. It is maintained, disrupted, resumed, weakened, strengthened, and reconfigured. A musical performance exists only while it is being performed; a conversation exists only while an exchange is being maintained; equilibrium exists only while a system compensates for deviations. In a similar way, the subject exists not as a thing behind experience, but as a maintained organization of experience.

This example is not a proof, but it helps clarify the type of explanation. If the subject is processual, then the question of its identity is not solved by searching for an unchanging core. It is solved through an analysis of modes of continuation. What allows a person to recognize oneself through change? What connects past and present? What makes an action part of one's own history? What makes it possible to distinguish an impulse, accept it, or reject it? These questions point to processes of stabilization, not to a hidden owner.

A processual understanding also allows for weak, disrupted, and conflictual forms of subjectivity. If the subject were a fixed entity, fragmentation would look like falling out of subjectivity or the breakdown of a center. If the subject is a process of maintaining coherence, then fragmentation becomes a change in the mode of organization. The subject function may weaken, narrow, rely on external structures, require the restoration of connections, or move toward reconfiguration.

The Minimality of the Model

The model is called minimal because it does not add explanatory elements beyond what is necessary. It does not assert a hidden observer, an unchanging I, a special inner substance, or a metaphysical bearer of experience. It preserves only the function that has to be explained: maintaining the coherence of experience. Everything else should be introduced only when a specific mechanism cannot be described without it.

Minimality does not mean poverty of description. On the contrary, it opens space for more precise analysis. Once the fixed center has been removed, it becomes clearer which processes actually work: attention distributes significance, memory connects the present with the past, language shapes distinctions, the body provides the background of presence and action, social relations support recognition, and external structures help maintain traces and obligations. These processes do not have to be reduced to one center in order to perform the subject function together.

Minimality also protects the model from excessive claims. From the claim that the subject is understood as a process of maintaining the coherence of experience, no ready-made neurobiological theory follows. No clinical protocol follows. No theory of physical time follows. No metaphysics of an immortal self follows. The formula sets a framework for analysis, not a completed system of explanations.

This principle is consistent with the critique of a substantial understanding of the self, but it preserves its own focus. Self-model theory emphasizes structures of modeling (Metzinger, 2003). The distinction among levels of selfhood emphasizes the heterogeneity of subjectivity (Gallagher, 2000). Embodied and enactive cognition point to the connection of cognition with body, action, and environment (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). The minimal model of the subject uses these lines as constraints and contexts, but formulates its own center of gravity: the coherence of experience.

What the Model Explains at the Minimal Level

At the minimal level, the model explains why the subject should not be thought of as a thing, while nevertheless not disappearing as a problem. If there is experience that is lived as belonging to someone, the form of this belonging has to be explained. If there are actions that are included in one's own history, the connection between action and self-reference has to be explained. If there are changes through which recognizability of oneself is preserved, continuity without an unchanging core has to be explained.

The model also explains why subjectivity can be partial and heterogeneous. Not all elements of experience are integrated to the same degree. Some states are easily included in self-description, others are experienced as alien, still others remain unclear, and a fourth group returns as a recurring task. If the subject is not a ready-made entity but a process of maintaining coherence, such heterogeneity becomes not an exception, but part of the object of analysis.

In addition, the model explains why external and social forms are not secondary. If experience is maintained through a system of relations, then notes, conversations, documents, roles, practices, places, and stable relationships can participate in stabilization. They do not become an independent subject and do not erase the bodily boundaries of the human being. But they can support processes of memory, attention, obligation, and self-description.