Subject-Traces and the Paradox of Re-Subjectivation Why Models of Experience Are Not Automatically Experiencing Models

Abstract

Subject-Traces and the Paradox of Re-Subjectivation: Why Models of Experience Are Not Automatically Experiencing Models This conceptual and methodological article introduces the Re-Subjectivation Guard (RSG), a claim-discipline framework for debates about artificial intelligence, subjectivity, and consciousness. The central distinction is between systems that process and organize subject-traces—externalized linguistic, behavioral, symbolic, and narrative residues of lived subjectivity—and systems that could plausibly possess an internally binding operative center of relevance. The paper argues that language-capable AI systems may become highly competent at reconstructing and stabilizing human subject-related discourse without thereby instantiating first-person subjectivity. This risk is formulated as the paradox of re-subjectivation: subjectivity is first objectified into public traces, these traces are modeled, and the resulting model is then mistakenly treated as though it had recovered the first-person presence that was transformed in the process of objectification. The article proposes a graded evaluation scaffold ranging from objective processing and subject-trace sensitivity to secondary relational stabilization, operative self-reference, operative centers of relevance, and strong subjectivity. It also introduces provisional operational indicators for testing higher-threshold claims, including relevance closure, valence asymmetry, consequence-bearing continuity, and perspectival non-substitutability. The framework does not claim to solve the hard problem of consciousness, nor does it provide a direct test for phenomenal experience. Its purpose is more limited and methodological: to prevent the unsupported inference from fluent representation of subjectivity to the attribution of subjectivity itself. In this sense, the paper contributes to AI evaluation, philosophy of mind, and AI ethics by preserving a disciplined intermediate position between anthropomorphic over-attribution and reductive dismissal.