The Architecture of the Self as a Multi-Interface System Subjectivity, Regulation, and Selective Disruption

Abstract

Despite its central role across psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, the concept of the self has resisted a unified definition. This persistent difficulty stems not from a lack of theoretical effort, but from ontological ambiguity, disciplinary fragmentation, and the frequent neglect of the self’s dynamic temporal organization. Existing models tend to isolate particular aspects of self-experience—such as subjectivity, identity, or neural correlates—without providing an integrative architecture capable of accounting for both unity and selective vulnerability. In this work, the self is reconceptualized not as a unitary entity or static structure, but as a multi-interface architecture through which consciousness represents itself as a subject. Four core self-interfaces are proposed: subjectivity, continuity, agency, and reality filtering. These interfaces operate in coordinated interaction, enabling coherent self-experience while remaining selectively dissociable. Self-control is further distinguished as a regulatory function that modulates interactions among interfaces rather than constituting an experiential component of the self. To illustrate the explanatory scope of this framework, patterns of selective disruption observed in clinical and contextual phenomena are examined as conceptual windows rather than diagnostic cases. Disruptions of temporal continuity, agency attribution, or reality discrimination are shown to align naturally with specific interface disturbances, while other dimensions of self-experience remain intact. Rather than offering a new definition of the self, this framework shifts the focus from definitional debates to functional organization. By mapping self-experience as a coordinated yet modular system embedded within consciousness, the proposed model provides an integrative conceptual foundation for future theoretical refinement and empirical investigation into the structure of selfhood.