Self-Referential Cognition and the Disintegration of Subjectivity: On the Limits of Internal Critique

his paper argues that a purely self-referential cognitive system cannot sustain epistemic stability or unified subjectivity. In the absence of external constraints, critical reasoning becomes endogenized, generating reflective regress and undermining the stability of belief and self-ascription. I introduce a distinction between the production of mental contents and their assignment to the subject, arguing that cognitive systems may fail not in generating thoughts but in owning them. Drawing on and extending Parfit’s reductionism, Wittgen- stein’s rule-following considerations, and Metzinger’s self-model theory, I defend the thesis that epistemic alterity—understood as constraint not generated by the system itself—is a necessary condition for cognitive stability. Subjectivity is therefore best conceived not as a substance or illusion, but as a dynamically stabilized process under constraint.