Automatic Mask Theory

This article presents Automatic Mask Theory, a comprehensive philosophical framework developed by Morteza Niami that reconceptualizes existence, subjectivity, agency, and ethics through the interrelated concepts of ontological leakage, dynamic masking, finite continuance, and responsible suspension. Challenging substantialist metaphysics that presuppose stable being and fixed identity, the theory proposes that existence is fundamentally characterized by continuous processes of production and erosion, where subjectivity emerges not as a substance but as a provisional pattern of regulated coherence. The Automatic Mask functions not as an instrument of concealment but as the constitutive apparatus through which provisional selfhood becomes possible. The framework articulates the Principle of Leakage Regulation as the foundational normative criterion for agency under conditions of chronic instability, and advances an ethics of sufficiency that displaces the classical burden of individual responsibility onto structural conditions of existence. The article systematically elaborates the core constructs and demonstrates their application across moral philosophy, political economy, epistemology, and social ontology. Keywords: Automatic Mask Theory, ontological leakage, finite continuance, responsible suspension, structural subjectivity, ethics of sufficiency, homeorhesis, political economy of extraction, dynamic masking.