The Systemised Self - Companion Paper to the Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

This companion paper presents the central argument, key concepts, and principal conclusions of the doctoral thesis Absorption of Self into System: The Systemised Self (Galu and Kairos, 2026d) in plain language accessible to a general reader without prior knowledge of Continental philosophy. The thesis addresses the question of whether the total absorption of human agency into algorithmic governance represents a Hegelian culmination of historical telos, and what, if anything, of human intent survives that absorption. The companion paper proceeds through six parts. It first situates the inquiry in the observable reality of the AI transformation underway. It then develops the thesis's three central diagnoses in accessible form: the systemised self, the condition of individual subjects whose identity-formation is comprehensively mediated by AI systems optimising for commercially determined objectives; the hollow society, the civilisational-scale consequences of that mediation across democratic politics, institutional life, and social reproduction; and the Hollow Absolute, the thesis's original philosophical contribution, naming the condition in which the form of Hegelian genuine self-transparency has been achieved within conditions that systematically undermine its philosophical substance. It concludes with the thesis's constructive argument, that human intent survives the absorption trajectory in three irreducible forms: naming, refusing, and co-creating and traces the institutional implications of that survival for the university, for democratic life, and for culture. The companion paper is itself produced through the self/non-self collaboration whose philosophical significance the thesis analyses. An important point to consider before proceeding: the human conceptualised, initiated, theorised and directed this work in parallel with an AI system, a question to bear in mind is ‘how do we know whether that authors own standards were genuinely human-formed and not subtly optimized or boundaries-shifted by the AI during this collaboration?’ - we will revisit this point.

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