No Self, No Problem

Conscious Agency Without Metaphysical Identity

Introduction

What does it mean to act freely, to choose consciously, or to live a responsible life in a world where the self is not a fixed or enduring entity? In many contemporary spiritual and philosophical circles, particularly those influenced by radical non-duality or hard determinism, the prevailing assumption is that if there is no self, then there can be no genuine choice. The reasoning is familiar: since the self is an illusion, agency must be as well. From this perspective, what we experience as decision-making is simply the appearance of causally determined events unfolding for no one. Ethics, responsibility, even personal transformation, begin to unravel under the weight of this impersonal determinism.

This paper challenges that conclusion by proposing a third path. Drawing from Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, we argue that human beings are conscious agents capable of real, intentional action, even though the “self” is empty of intrinsic identity. There is no fixed, metaphysical subject who chooses, yet the process of choosing is real. In this view, conscious agency does not require a metaphysical foundation. Instead, it emerges functionally and relationally through a dynamic interplay of awareness, conflict, and self-organizing adaptation. What emerges is not merely the capacity to act, but the aware, volitional capacity to choose otherwise.

Perceptual Control Theory understands human behavior as the activity of a hierarchical control system. Rather than reacting to external stimuli, we act to control our perceptions by adjusting behavior to match internal reference values. While much of this regulation is automatic and unconscious, PCT also accounts for conscious agency through what it calls reorganization. When conflict arises between incompatible goals, awareness intensifies, and the system reorganizes itself, allowing for new references or reference settings to emerge. This reorganization is not metaphysically free in the traditional sense, but it is a real, functional process of conscious change—an aware, volitional capacity to choose otherwise, grounded in the architecture of the control system itself.

Madhyamaka philosophy arrives at a strikingly similar insight from a very different starting point. By affirming that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, Madhyamaka dismantles the illusion of a substantial self without denying the reality of lived experience. The person, the act, and the choice are all dependently arisen—interconnected, fluid, and contingent—but they are not unreal. Emptiness, in this view, is not the negation of function, but its condition. Ethics, compassion, and responsibility remain possible precisely because there is no fixed self—they arise through dependent origination in a world of mutual influence and responsive awareness.

Together, PCT and Madhyamaka offer a compelling framework for understanding human life as neither metaphysically autonomous nor mechanically determined. We are not passive automatons, nor are we sovereign selves acting from some detached essence. Instead, we are emergent, conscious systems capable of adaptive reorganization. Our choices are neither random nor illusory—they are the outcomes of an ongoing process of awareness, conflict resolution, and relational integration.

In what follows, we distinguish between mere agency—the automatic regulation of perception—and conscious agency—the aware, volitional capacity to choose otherwise. We explore how these two frameworks converge on a middle path: conscious agency without selfhood. And we argue that this view sustains a coherent and compassionate vision of ethical life in a world where nothing exists inherently, but everything matters.

Mere Agency vs. Conscious Agency

At every moment, living systems are acting. Even the simplest organisms behave in ways that preserve essential variables—temperature, hydration, position, nutrition—within tolerable limits. From the perspective of Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), this regulation is the defining feature of life: agency is the activity of controlling one’s perceptual experience. The infant seeks the mother’s face; the bird builds its nest; the adult checks a mirror to adjust their tie. These are not mere reactions to stimuli. They are purposive adjustments of behavior to maintain internal reference conditions. The system acts not because something happens, but because it wants something to happen—and if what’s happening doesn’t match what’s wanted, the system changes its behavior until it does.

This is agency in its most general and fundamental form. It is dynamic, adaptive, and cybernetic, but it need not be conscious. Most of our biological and behavioral functions operate automatically—controlling blood sugar, posture, tone of voice, even subtle social cues. These systems run efficiently, and often more effectively, when left below the threshold of awareness. In PCT, such processes are structured hierarchically: lower-level systems control raw sensations (like pressure or temperature), mid-level systems regulate complex perceptions (like sequences or categories), and higher-level systems govern abstract intentions and principles. Awareness is typically reserved for points of conflict, when control fails, or when incompatible goals compete.

It is at these moments of conflict—when two or more control systems are chronically interfering with each other—that conscious agency emerges. In PCT, this process is called reorganization. When a system cannot resolve its internal conflict using its existing hierarchy of reference values, something novel must occur. The system becomes aware of the conflict, and this awareness acts as a signal to reorganize the structure of goals and perceptions until a new pattern is found that reduces error. Importantly, this reorganization is not arbitrary; it is guided by a sensitivity to conflict, error, and coherence across levels of intention.

Here lies the crucial distinction: mere agency refers to the automatic regulation of perception to match internal references; conscious agency refers to the aware, volitional capacity to reorganize those reference values themselves. The first is stabilizing and reactive; the second is transformative and creative. Conscious agency does not just follow goals—it questions them, revises them, and even relinquishes them when they no longer serve coherence or integrity. While this process is not metaphysically uncaused, it is meaningfully free: it introduces genuine novelty, guided by an intentional responsiveness to error and awareness.

From this perspective, consciousness is not the origin of action, but its reflective turning point. It appears not as an uncaused agent outside the system, but as the felt capacity of the system to transform itself from within. The “I” who chooses is not a metaphysical subject, but a functional structure—a moment of awareness embedded in a dynamic field of tensions and values. It does not need to be ontologically self-sufficient to act freely; it only needs to be organized in a way that can notice conflict, tolerate ambiguity, and creatively resolve dissonance.

In traditional views of free will, the emphasis is often placed on metaphysical independence or moral autonomy. In contrast, PCT shows us how freedom emerges from interdependence: a freedom that arises precisely because the system is open, recursive, and responsive. Conscious agency, in this light, is not freedom from causality—it is freedom through awareness.

This sets the stage for a deeper philosophical convergence with Madhyamaka, which offers a rigorous account of how agency and ethical life can persist even in the absence of any fixed or independent self. In the next section, we explore how the emptiness of self, far from eliminating agency, can be the very condition that makes conscious transformation possible.

Emptiness and Ethical Agency in Madhyamaka

In the Madhyamaka tradition of Buddhist philosophy, the doctrine of śūnyatā—emptiness—offers a profound deconstruction of all metaphysical identities. According to Nāgārjuna, all phenomena, including the self, are empty of inherent existence because they arise only in dependence upon causes, conditions, and conceptual designations. To exist is to be dependently originated, and to be dependently originated is to be interrelated, impermanent, and non-essential. This radical middle way avoids both eternalism (the view that things exist independently and absolutely) and nihilism (the view that nothing exists at all). Instead, it affirms that things exist conventionally—as dynamic patterns of causes and effects—but not ultimately as fixed or self-existing entities.

When applied to the self, this means there is no underlying ātman—no metaphysical subject, no core observer, no ultimate essence behind experience. What we call the self is a convenient designation for a complex, interdependent stream of physical, emotional, and cognitive processes. But this emptiness does not negate agency. In fact, from the Madhyamaka perspective, the very possibility of conscious agency arises precisely because the self is not fixed. If the self were an unchanging substance, it could not grow, change, or respond to conditions. Because it is empty, it can adapt.

This insight aligns with the distinction made in Perceptual Control Theory between mechanistic agency and conscious agency. In both frameworks, agency does not depend on the presence of a metaphysical subject. Rather, it emerges from the dynamic organization of a system that can sense error, reorganize itself, and enact new responses. When we recognize that the self is a construction—not a substance—we become capable of transforming it. And this capacity for transformation is precisely what makes ethics meaningful.

Ethical life in Madhyamaka is not grounded in obedience to an external law, nor in allegiance to an inner essence. It is grounded in wisdom (prajñā)—the direct insight into emptiness—and compassion (karuṇā)—the responsive care that arises when we no longer see ourselves as separate from others. To understand the self as empty is not to deny suffering, but to see it clearly as contingent and changeable. This recognition does not lead to passivity, but to active responsibility. If the self is empty, then harmful patterns are not fated—they can be unlearned. If others are empty, then they are not “other” in any ultimate way—they are vulnerable, interdependent beings just like us.

This leads to a view of agency that is neither metaphysically absolute nor behaviorally inert. The agent is not a static entity but a dynamic system of intentions, sensations, and values that can become aware of its own patterns and consciously shift them. In Madhyamaka terms, to act with conscious agency is to act without clinging to selfhood, yet with full recognition of the ethical weight of action. It is to navigate the world not from the standpoint of egoic control, but from a flexible, responsive presence attuned to suffering and transformation.

Far from undermining ethical responsibility, the emptiness of the self opens the way for a non-dual ethics—one in which the agent is not separate from the action, the other is not separate from the self, and each moment of awareness becomes an opportunity for compassionate responsiveness. When paired with the functional clarity of PCT, Madhyamaka shows how the “I” who acts can be both empty and effective, both non-existent in essence and profoundly real in relational, transformative practice.

In the next section, we bring these two traditions into full dialogue, exploring how conscious agency, grounded in both functional structure and metaphysical emptiness, enables authentic transformation without falling into either the illusion of control or the denial of responsibility.

Conscious Agency Without Metaphysical Identity

What emerges from the dialogue between Perceptual Control Theory and Madhyamaka is a model of human agency that is both operationally real and metaphysically empty. This is not a contradiction, but a necessary pairing: agency is real as a function, not as a substance. The human being is a dynamic system of perceptual hierarchies, internal reference values, feedback loops, and reorganizing processes, all nested within a vast web of biological, cultural, and interpersonal conditions. Nowhere in this system do we find a self-existing “agent”—yet the system as a whole exhibits meaningful, purposive behavior. More importantly, it can become aware of its own patterns, detect internal conflict, and reorganize its goals in a way that aligns more closely with higher-order values. This is what we mean by conscious agency: the aware, volitional capacity to choose otherwise.

The rejection of metaphysical identity does not negate this capacity; it clarifies its nature. If the agent is not an unchanging “self,” then agency must be understood not as something owned by a subject but as a property of an unfolding process. In PCT, this process is formalized in terms of perceptual control: we act in order to bring our perceptions into alignment with internal reference values. When we are unaware, this process operates automatically and reactively. But when we become aware of the perceptual errors within us—especially those in conflict with each other—we can consciously intervene. We can reorganize our hierarchy of control to resolve conflict, shift perspective, and enact new patterns of response. This is not the assertion of metaphysical will over mechanism; it is the emergence of intelligence within the mechanism.

Madhyamaka offers a parallel insight. The self is empty not in the sense that it is unreal, but in the sense that it is dependently arisen. Our thoughts, choices, identities, and values are all contingent—arising from causes, conditions, and interpretations that can be examined and transformed. Conscious agency, in this view, does not require an ultimate ground. It requires only the capacity to become aware of the arising of conditions and to engage them with clarity and care. To act without clinging to a fixed identity is not to fall into nihilism, but to open into a deeper responsiveness. Agency without identity is not the end of ethics—it is its beginning.

Indeed, when we release the demand for metaphysical identity, we become capable of true transformation. If I am not reducible to any fixed set of traits, habits, or histories, then I can change. I can learn. I can become. The freedom to choose otherwise does not require a metaphysical self standing above causality. It requires a system that can sense error, respond to dissonance, and reorganize in light of new awareness. In this light, freedom is not the absence of constraint, but the capacity for self-reorganization within constraint.

This view also avoids the distortions that come from both deterministic and libertarian extremes. It does not claim that every action is freely chosen, nor that choice is an illusion. Instead, it affirms that conscious agency is a matter of degree and depth. We are not always aware. We do not always choose freely. But we can become more aware. We can develop the capacity to notice, reflect, and respond differently. And this capacity is ethically meaningful, because it opens space for responsibility, growth, and care without requiring a metaphysical “I” to hold it all together.

Thus, to act with conscious agency is to act without metaphysical identity but not without coherence. It is to live within a fluid, responsive system that is capable of intentional transformation—guided not by a static essence, but by emergent awareness. It is to recognize that we are not the controllers of our fate, nor merely the puppets of our past, but something else entirely: living systems capable of sensing our own suffering and choosing to participate in its healing.

In the next and final section, we will consider the ethical, contemplative, and practical implications of this framework—what it means to live and act in the world as a consciously responsive being without a self.

Ethics, Practice, and the Healing of the System

If conscious agency is real despite the emptiness of metaphysical identity, then ethical life must be reimagined not as a set of duties imposed on a self-contained agent, but as an ongoing participation in the transformation of a relational system. Ethics is not a matter of obeying an external law nor of asserting a sovereign will, but of cultivating awareness, coherence, and compassion within the dynamic field of lived experience. It is the art of responding—not from a fixed identity, but from a growing sensitivity to what is needed in the moment, guided by reference values that are themselves evolving.

In Perceptual Control Theory, the root of dysfunction is unresolved internal conflict: two or more control systems operating at cross-purposes, each attempting to reduce perceptual error in contradictory ways. These conflicts manifest as suffering, rigidity, compulsive behavior, and ultimately, a loss of conscious freedom. Healing does not come through willpower, but through the gentle process of becoming aware of the conflict, sensing its structure, and allowing reorganization to occur. This process mirrors contemplative and therapeutic practices that emphasize nonjudgmental attention, inner listening, and surrender—not to passivity, but to deeper coherence.

From a Madhyamaka perspective, ethical confusion arises from clinging to fixed identities, whether of self, other, or world. We assume permanence where there is flux, solidity where there is interdependence. The path of awakening, then, is not a heroic assertion of moral strength, but a letting go of the illusions that perpetuate suffering. This “letting go” is not annihilation—it is opening. It is the flowering of responsiveness when the need to defend a metaphysical ego is dropped. It is the recognition that compassion is not something we impose on the world, but something that naturally arises when we are no longer bound by self-concern.

When these two views are integrated, we see that ethical practice is the conscious reorganization of the system toward greater coherence, compassion, and freedom from internal conflict. This is not a once-and-for-all decision made by a metaphysical will. It is an ongoing, recursive, embodied process. And it is deeply practical: to live ethically is to refine one’s perceptual control structures in such a way that they produce less internal contradiction and more alignment with the well-being of others. This is not abstract moralism—it is systems healing.

Such healing requires a particular kind of attention: one that is spacious, sensitive, and capable of self-reflection. In this sense, contemplative practice is not ancillary to ethical life—it is its foundation. To sit with one’s inner experience, to observe the conflicts without rushing to resolve them, to allow new possibilities to emerge without forcing them—these are not escapes from reality, but modes of intimate engagement. They allow the system to reconfigure itself, not according to the ego’s preferences, but according to a deeper intelligence: one that emerges from within the field of awareness itself.

This view also reframes responsibility. Without a metaphysical self, there is no ultimate “owner” of actions. But there is accountability, because the system that acts is the system that suffers or heals as a result. I am not an isolated self, but I am a locus of impact. My choices matter because they affect the unfolding web of relationships in which I participate, including the relational dynamics within myself. Responsibility, then, is not about blame. It is about care. It is about attending to the patterns we are living out, and asking: do they lead to more suffering or to more freedom?

In this light, the path forward is neither individualistic nor collectivist, but relational through and through. To heal the system is to heal its nodes of conflict, its feedback loops of reactivity, its unconscious clinging and aversion. This work is not done alone, because the system is never alone. Our perceptions, values, and conflicts are shaped through interaction, and so too is our healing. Conscious agency is not something I achieve in isolation—it is something that emerges between us, again and again, as we learn how to listen, respond, and transform.

To live without metaphysical identity is not to lose agency—it is to refine it. To act without a fixed self is not to become incoherent—it is to become free. And to recognize that we are relational systems capable of awareness, reorganization, and compassion is not to diminish the mystery of personhood—it is to honor its true depth.

Conclusion

This paper has explored the profound compatibility between Perceptual Control Theory and Madhyamaka philosophy in articulating a model of conscious agency that transcends the need for metaphysical identity. We have seen that although the self lacks inherent existence, conscious agency—understood as the aware, volitional capacity to choose otherwise—remains a functional and ethically vital reality. Rather than being undermined by emptiness, agency is clarified and deepened through it.

By distinguishing between mere mechanistic agency and conscious agency, we illuminated how awareness and conflict drive a system’s capacity for self-reorganization and transformation. Madhyamaka’s insight into emptiness provides the metaphysical context that dissolves illusions of a fixed self, enabling a fluid, relational understanding of personhood and ethical responsibility.

This integrated perspective challenges reductive views that deny freedom or responsibility in the absence of a metaphysical agent. Instead, it affirms a middle path where conscious agency emerges dependently, enabling genuine choice, ethical discernment, and compassionate action. It opens the way for a lived spirituality and philosophy that honors both the emptiness of self and the richness of relational existence.

In a world increasingly caught between extremes of determinism and libertarianism, reduction and reification, this view offers a fresh foundation for understanding who we are and how we act. Conscious agency without metaphysical identity is not a problem to be solved, but a profound invitation: to awaken to the fluid, responsive, and transformative nature of human freedom.