This paper presents a structural analysis of WILL and the conscious subject within a layered model of consciousness. While contemporary research has made significant progress in explaining cognitive and affective processes, the nature of the subject and the role of will remain insufficiently clarified. The study proposes that both the conscious subject and WILL can be understood as distinct yet interdependent structural aspects of consciousness. The conscious subject is defined as the integrative center that sustains continuity of experience, identity, and the capacity for selection. WILL is defined as the directional function through which action is organized in accordance with principles, values, and enduring aims, rather than reactive impulses. By distinguishing WILL from desire in terms of their structural origins and modes of operation, the paper clarifies how principled action becomes possible within a layered field of consciousness. Agency is thus understood not as the mere selection among options, but as the capacity for self-organization grounded in the coordinated relation between the conscious subject and WILL. The framework also provides a basis for reinterpreting free will as structural coherence rather than the absence of causation, and for distinguishing human agency from artificial systems, which lack both an integrative center of experience and a function equivalent to WILL. This study offers a unified and non-reductive account of agency, avoiding both strict naturalism and unexamined metaphysical assumptions, while remaining consistent with the author’s previous work on the layered structure of consciousness.
Hideki Matsubara (Thu,) studied this question.