The Primacy of Intentionality in the Constitution of the Self

This article argues that personal identity is constituted at what it terms “Level A” through subjective intentionality, narrative self-projection, and the exercise of moral freedom, and that artificial intelligence operates primarily at “Level B,” the algorithmically mediated plane of social recognition. The confusion between these two planes generates false expectations about AI, obscures human responsibility in the transformation of structures, and misconceives the irreducible specificity of identity self-constitution. The article articulates Level B into three qualitatively distinct planes, the visibility plane, the ambition plane, and the emotional plane, each with its own mechanisms of action and specific modalities of influence on Level A. Drawing on Thomistic participated agency, Searle’s irreducibility of first-person subjectivity, and Honneth’s theory of recognition, it argues that the Level A/Level B distinction reflects a real ontological difference that the extended mind framework cannot capture, and that digital colonization, the progressive erosion of Level A by the three planes of Level B, is a reversible pathology, not a permanent condition.