Identity Emerges at Level A of Intentionality and Seeks Recognition at Level B of the Digital: Confusing the Two Planes Generates Illusions about AI
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Introduction
The Case of the Fashion Blogger: A Contemporary Philosophical Problem
“I identify as a fashion blogger but do not have enough followers to be considered one. I am asking artificial intelligence for help in achieving this goal.”
This trivial scenario reveals one of the most urgent philosophical questions of the algorithmic era: where is personal identity constituted when our lives are mediated by intelligent systems? The question is not merely speculative. When I ask AI for help in becoming a fashion blogger, am I seeking support in the constitution of my identity or only in its social recognition?
The problem has already attracted the attention of mainstream scientific literature. Chiriatti, Ganapini, Panai, Ubiali, and Riva have recently proposed, in Nature Human Behaviour, the concept of “System 0” as an artificial cognitive layer that precedes and mediates Kahneman’s Systems 1 and 2, framing it as a “cognitive extension” in the sense of Clark and Chalmers. Their proposal confirms that the problem is real and scientifically urgent. It does not, however, resolve it at the level of causal structure: framing AI as a cognitive extension presupposes that the subject’s cognitive functions are externalized into the artefact. But generative AI does not perform functions externalized by the subject: it produces effects in the subject that the subject never possessed internally as functions to be externalized. This inversion of causal direction is the theoretical point that makes the distinction between Level A and Level B necessary.
Three interpretations of the fashion blogger case are possible. The first suggests that AI co-constitutes my personal identity through forms of algorithmic recognition. The second, reductionist in character, regards AI as a neutral tool in service of an already fully constituted identity. The third interpretation, which this essay intends to defend, rigorously distinguishes two planes: AI operates in the social recognition of an identity that is constituted elsewhere, through subjective intentionality.
Thesis
Personal identity is constituted in what we shall call “Level A” through subjective intentionality, narrative self-projection, and the exercise of moral freedom oriented by the theological virtues. This identity then seeks recognition in “Level B,” the social framework co-constituted by the digital mediation environment, where artificial intelligence operates as a non-intentional social agent. Confusing 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.
This distinction is neither arbitrary nor merely analytical. It responds to an ontological necessity: to re-establish the correct weight and proper responsibility of AI, avoiding both the anthropomorphizing that attributes to the algorithm capacities constitutive of human identity, and the reductionism that ignores its real causal efficacy in the dynamics of social recognition. Moreover, the distinction between Level A and Level B is the only category capable of describing what the concept of “mind extension” fails to capture: the fact that generative AI does not extend the subject’s pre-existing functions but produces in the subject qualitatively new effects through an inverted causal direction.
Note on Biological and Clinical Data
An objection to the Level A/B distinction concerns biological and clinical data. If my genomic data, blood values, and diagnostic images are objectively mine in a physical sense, do they not belong to Level A rather than Level B? The answer requires important clarification. The physical body with its biological processes is neither Level A nor Level B, but the material basis presupposed by both. Clinical data (records, imaging, genomic sequences, digital twins) are digital representations of this material basis and therefore belong to Level B as do all representations and measurements. Even a serious diagnosis, which objectively describes real pathological processes, does not automatically constitute my identity. Identity constitution occurs in the meaning I intentionally assign to that diagnosis; in the response I choose in the face of it. A person with a cancer diagnosis can narrate themselves as a fighter, a victim, a witness of hope, or a person learning to accept death: these are all intentional responses (Level A) to the same clinical datum (Level B). The datum does not determine identity; identity is constituted in the freedom of the intentional response oriented virtuously.
Part I – The Problem: Identity Constitution and Social Recognition
1. Identity as Intentional Self-Narration (Level A)
1.1 The Projective Dimension of the Self
Personal identity is not a static given but an existential project in continuous becoming. When I say, “I am a fashion blogger” I am not merely noting a fact but expressing a projective intention: “I want to be recognized as a fashion blogger.” This projective dimension reveals the constitutive narrative temporality of human identity. I am what I have been (past sedimented in experiences), what I am (present of self-understanding), and above all what I want to become (future as horizon of possibility).
The choice of identifying oneself as a “critical and intellectual fashion blogger” rather than as a “fast and visual influencer” is not neutral. It expresses a hierarchy of values, a vision of one’s social role, a specific communicative intention. Identity, in this phenomenological sense, self-constitutes through intentional choices that sediment over time, building a coherent narrative. It is not the algorithm that decides who I am, but I who, through reflective and deliberative acts, progressively construct an image of myself oriented toward ideals and values I consider worthy of realization.
1.2 The Irreducible Characteristics of Self-Narration
Identity self-narration possesses characteristics that distinguish it radically from processes of algorithmic identification. The first is the understanding of meaning: I understand what it means to be a fashion blogger, not just how to optimize engagement metrics. This semantic understanding is qualitatively different from the syntactic processing of patterns performed by AI. The algorithm can correlate “fashion blogger” with certain behavioral characteristics but cannot understand the existential meaning of this identity for the person living it.
The second is existential project-orientation: I have aims that transcend immediate success. I want to contribute to a critical discourse on fashion because I consider this goal intrinsically valid, regardless of metric results. AI can maximize engagement but cannot have its own existential projects. It always operates in view of ends established by human intelligence.
The third is the capacity to make sense of failure. If my critical content achieves poor visibility, I can interpret this failure as a transitory moment in my identity narrative, as a trial to overcome, as an indicator that I need to find more effective communicative strategies without betraying my values. Failure is not a final verdict but a narrative datum, a stage in a journey that remains open. The algorithm records only metric results: it cannot understand failure as a necessary moment of identity maturation.
The fourth is moral responsibility: I can be called to account for my identity choices. This responsibility presupposes freedom: the capacity to choose differently, to orient my identity project according to ethical criteria, to modify my course when I recognize I have taken the wrong direction.
The fifth is second-order reflexivity: I can narrate myself, reinterpret my journey, change direction. Narrative identity includes the capacity for meta-narration: I can reflect on my story, recognize turning points, identify moments in which I betrayed my values or realized my ideals. This capacity for reflexive self-thematization is the prerogative of intentional consciousness.
1.3 Open Temporality against Algorithmic Closure
Human identity is always in becoming, characterized by what phenomenology calls ecstatic temporality: a present that reaches toward the future while retaining the sedimentation of the past. This temporality is constitutively open. My identity project can always be redefined, reinterpreted, oriented in new directions. I am not imprisoned by my past choices, even though they condition the present possibilities.
The algorithm operates instead according to a predictive logic that tends toward closure: based on what you have been, it predicts what you will be. If your past content has achieved low engagement, the algorithm will categorize you as a “low-potential content creator” and reduce the visibility of your future posts. This predictive logic transforms historical data into destiny, past failure into a verdict on the future.
This is where theological hope enters. It keeps narrative temporality open against the deterministic closure of algorithmic predictions. Christian hope is not psychological optimism but a theological virtue that preserves the fundamental distinction between failure as datum and failure as definitive outcome. Against the algorithmic logic of prediction that closes the future in the statistical calculation of the past, hope maintains the constitutive openness of identity narration.
2. Recognition as a Subsequent Moment (Level B)
2.1 The Fundamental Distinction: I Recognize What I Already Know
The first decisive objection against the idea of constitutive algorithmic recognition is linguistic and phenomenological: recognition (re-cognition) necessarily presupposes something already given to be re-known. If the algorithm were to constitute my identity, it would not be recognizing it in the proper sense, but identifying, categorizing, or even creating it. The prefix re- is not ornamental: it indicates the repetition of a prior cognitive act.
When I seek social recognition as a fashion blogger, I suppose that I have already identified myself as such through an act of intentional self-narration. Social recognition confirms, validates, and publicly legitimizes an identity that has been constituted in Level A of subjective self-understanding. If this process of constitution had not occurred, we would have not recognition but discovery: someone else tells me who I am, identifying me in categories I had not chosen for myself. This distinction has immediate practical consequences. If I confuse constitution with recognition, I attribute to the algorithm a power it does not possess that of determining who I am. I generate false expectations and inappropriately delegate to technical systems decisions that belong to the exercise of personal freedom.
2.2 The Three Planes of Level B
Level B is not a homogeneous space. Its structure articulates into three qualitatively distinct planes, each with its own mechanisms of action and specific modalities of influence on Level A. Understanding them is essential to comprehending how digital recognition can exert pressure on identity constitution without however determining it.
The visibility plane is the proper algorithmic plane of Level B: the plane where metrics, followers, engagement, recommendation, and amplification systems operate. Digital platforms are built on the attention economy, which transforms visibility into a scarce resource governed by algorithmic logics that privilege content capable of generating immediate reactions. This plane, in isolation, does not necessarily penetrate Level A: a subject with a solid identity constitution can operate on the visibility plane without allowing its metrics to become the criterion of its own value. The pressure, however, is structural: the visibility plane is built to make its metrics appear to be the only available measure of success.
The ambition plane is the collective-aspirational plane of Level B: the digital space in which the gap between what the subject is and what it would like to become is inhabited through the digital community. On this plane one constructs a self-image closer to what one aspires to be, finds the comfort of others who share the same aspiration, and obtains the recognition of a community that sees and appreciates not the person one is but the person one is trying to become. The ambition plane can function virtuously, when the recognition obtained confirms direction and sustains perseverance toward real growth in Level A. It becomes pathological when recognition substitutes for growth: visibility producing visibility, ambition feeding ambition, without ever genuinely touching anyone’s Level A. The criterion for distinguishing the two cases is not quantitative: it is not the number of followers but the real causal direction. Is the visibility plane serving Level A, or substituting it?
The emotional plane is the affective-resonant plane of Level B: the plane on which digital content latches onto affective traces deposited by the recipient’s personal history, operating below the threshold of rational awareness and producing emotional certainties that precede any critical evaluation. Certain content does not act on the subject’s rationality: it acts on their emotional history. It does not convince through arguments: it resonates. It touches something already inside, a fear, a pain, a desire, a suspicion, and that resonance immediately produces an emotional certainty that precedes any rational evaluation. Generative AI has made this mechanism particularly urgent: it is now possible to produce emotionally powerful content without any human being having lived what that content evokes, industrially simulating emotional authenticity.
The crucial distinction among the three planes concerns the way in which each intervenes on Level A. The visibility plane operates from the outside, offering or denying recognition. The ambition plane operates at the collective-aspirational level, shaping the image of the ideal self. The emotional plane operates below the threshold of rational consciousness, latching onto pre-existing affective structures. The third is the most subtle and potentially the most pervasive, because it does not present itself as external pressure but as already-formed inner experience.
2.3 Honneth’s Three Spheres Re-Read through the Three Planes
Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition distinguishes three spheres in which the demand for intersubjective recognition articulates itself. Analyzed through the three planes of Level B, Honneth’s spheres reveal how AI operates differently in each of them, with varying degrees of potential penetration into Level A.
The sphere of love comprises primary relationships characterized by emotional recognition that generate self-confidence. This is the sphere to which the emotional plane of Level B latches with the greatest force: content that simulates personalized affection, recommendation algorithms that create the illusion of being seen and understood, communities that offer pseudo-intimacy. AI cannot operate in this sphere properly because it lacks the affective intentionality that constitutes love, but it can simulate its emotional effect with increasing efficacy. This is the deepest risk of the emotional plane: not the substitution of love, but its functional simulation.
The sphere of rights concerns legal recognition that generates self-respect. Here the visibility plane operates primarily: systems of digital identity, certifications, account verification, platform access. AI identifies, the legal system recognizes. The risk in this sphere is algorithmic opacity: decisions affecting rights (access to credit, personnel selection, insurance profiling) made by systems whose functioning is incomprehensible to those who suffer their consequences.
The sphere of solidarity concerns the recognition of social contributions that generate self-esteem. This is the sphere where the ambition plane operates most visibly: engagement metrics, reputation rankings, communities that certify value. The risk here is the substitution of qualitative judgment with quantitative measurement: genuine solidarity recognizes the specific contribution of a specific person; the ambition plane tends to substitute this recognition with statistical approval.
2.4 The Fashion Blogger Dialectic: Three Possible Responses
Returning to the fashion blogger case with more precise tools: imagine publishing fashion criticism content for a year with poor engagement. The algorithmic environment has produced real structural pressure through the three planes of Level B: the visibility plane has reduced the reach of the posts; the ambition plane has offered models of rapid success against which to compare oneself negatively; the emotional plane has resonated with pre-existing anxieties of inadequacy.
Three identity narratives are possible in the face of this situation. The first allows itself to be constituted by algorithmic logics: “I am a failed fashion blogger. The metrics demonstrate this. I must completely change my approach or give up.” This narrative delivers identity constitution to Level B, abdicating from the self-constitution of Level A.
The second maintains constitution in Level A: “I am a critical communicator operating in an algorithmic environment hostile to deep content. Metrics are a structural datum, not a judgment on the value of my work. I can seek alternative platforms, build different communities, accept reduced visibility as the cost of fidelity to my values.”
The third transforms the encounter with Level B into an occasion for prophetic witness: “Algorithmic resistance to my content reveals an unjust structure that penalizes depth. My service includes denouncing these structures and building alternatives. Even with few followers, I am sowing different possibilities.”
The three narratives depart from the same objective situation but interpret it radically differently. Digital lay formation must educate toward the second and third forms of self-narration, helping people constitute their identity from the relationship with God (Level A) rather than from algorithmic recognition (Level B).
2.5 Structural Conditioning without Determinism: The Invincible Residue
The emotional plane poses a radical challenge to the distinction between Level A and Level B: if the emotional plane operates below rational awareness, does Level A not arrive already partially shaped by Level B before conscious intentionality can intervene? The answer is that pre-reflective conditioning is not deterministic. This is not a programmatic claim: it is a convergent result from quite different directions of contemporary research.
Cognitive neuroscience documents the persistence of a center of self-regulation even under conditions of massive conditioning: studies on neural plasticity show that the metacognitive capacity to observe one’s own states and modify them is never eliminated by the environment, however pervasive. The psychology of resilience, from Frankl onward, empirically documents the survival of the subjective center even under conditions of environmental coercion far more total than algorithmic conditioning: it is precisely the capacity to respond freely to given conditions, not to choose the conditions themselves, that constitutes specifically human freedom. Cognitive psychology on attitude change shows that persuasion, even when it operates through pre-reflective channels, encounters structural resistances that are not deliberated but constitutive of the subject.
On the philosophical plane, Searle has argued forcefully that first-person subjectivity is ontologically irreducible to any third-person description, including the algorithmic. On the theological plane, the Christian tradition calls this invincible residue imago Dei: an ontological structure that sin can deform but not eliminate, and that grace can reach precisely because it is never completely obscured.
The decisive point is that pre-reflective conditioning does not eliminate subjectivity: it encounters it. The emotional plane and the ambition plane intervene on a pre-existing subject that has the proper structure of Level A, intentionality, narrativity, moral freedom, and who can, in principle and with appropriate conditions, resist the conditioning, recognize it as such, and orient its response differently. “Digital colonization,” the progressive functional erosion of Level A produced by the three planes of Level B, is therefore a reversible pathology, not a permanent condition.
Part II – THE Ontological Foundations
3. Level A / Level B Distinction as Ontological Necessity
3.1 Why Distinction Is Not Merely Analytical
The distinction between Level A and Level B is not an analytical convention but reflects a real ontological difference between two modes of being of identity. To grasp this difference, it is useful to compare it with the most sophisticated attempt to think about the relationship between mind and technological artefacts: Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind theory.
Clark and Chalmers argue that cognitive processes do not stop at the boundaries of the skull but extend into artefacts that perform functions equivalent to internal ones. If an agent with Alzheimer’s disease uses a notebook to compensate for memory loss, the notebook performs exactly the function that biological memory performs in a healthy agent: it is therefore part of that agent’s cognitive system. This parity principle has generated a fertile philosophical debate. It fails, however, to describe what generative AI produces in the subject.
The problem is structural: the parity principle presupposes that the cognitive function exists first inside the subject and is then externalized into an artefact. Generative AI inverts this causal direction. The emotional plane of Level B produces in the subject affective states that the subject never possessed internally as functions to be externalized: they are received from the artefact as causal effects that operate on the subject’s structure. The ambition plane produces in the subject collective aspirations that did not pre-exist before interaction with the algorithmically mediated digital community. The subject has not externalized these functions: it has received them. This inversion of causal direction shows that the Level A/Level B distinction is not a greater descriptive granularity within the same conceptual schema of cognitive extension: it is a different conceptual schema, necessary because it describes phenomena with a causal structure that the parity principle, as formulated, is unable to capture.
3.2 Participated Agency as Foundation
The ontological foundation of the A/B distinction is the Thomistic doctrine of participated agency: action involving algorithmic systems is reducible neither to the action of the human subject nor to the operation of the algorithm but emerges from the asymmetric co-constitution of an intentional agent (the human subject) and a non-intentional agent (the algorithmic system). Asymmetry is essential to the framework. AI systems participate in human action not as merely instrumental causes but as co-constitutive agents that actively transform what they mediate. An automatic translation system does not simply produce linguistic equivalence by virtue of human input: it actively co-constitutes meaning through elaborations that integrate semantic context, cultural patterns, and its own algorithmic logics. Yet this operative autonomy remains inscribed within a fundamental ontological dependence: AI always operates in view of ends established by human intelligence.
The theoretical foundation of this asymmetry is the Thomistic doctrine of analogical participation: just as creatures participate in divine being without possessing it autonomously, so AI participates in human intelligence in a derived and limited mode. This participation is real, AI has genuine causal efficacy, but asymmetric: it depends constitutively on human intelligence and cannot be inverted without losing its specific character. The Thomistic framework is not a confessional ornament here: it is the instrument that allows one to describe with precision the ontological structure of a relationship that neither mind–machine dualism nor functionalist monism can adequately capture.
3.3 The Fundamental Ontological Distinction
Level A is the plane of intentional identity constitution: in the subject’s intentional consciousness as a pole of reflexive self-understanding, through the exercise of moral freedom, existential choices, and narrative self-projection oriented by values and ends considered worthy. Its characteristics are phenomenological intentionality, semantic understanding, existential project-orientation, moral responsibility, capacity for self-narration, and temporality open toward the future. AI does not operate at Level A. It cannot do so because it lacks the capacities constitutive of personal identity: intentionality, understanding of meaning, moral freedom, and reflexivity.
LevelB is the plane of social recognition: in the digital environment as a public space of algorithmically mediated social interaction, through categorizations, recommendation algorithms, visibility systems, engagement metrics, and networking structures, in the processes of social interaction where subjective identity seeks confirmation, validation, and public recognition. Its characteristics are technological mediation, causal efficacy without intentionality, structuring of possibilities, pre-deliberative conditioning, and structural resistance. AI operates here as a non-intentional social agent. It genuinely structures the space of recognition, determines conditions of visibility, and orients social dynamics, without understanding the meaning of the identities it mediates, without moral intentionality, without the capacity for authentic qualitative evaluation. The distinction is not arbitrary. It responds to the ontological necessity of re-establishing the correct weight and proper responsibility of AI, avoiding both anthropomorphizing and reductionism.
4. The Subject as Pole of Self-Constitution: Thomistic Foundations
4.1 Intentionality as Irreducible Excess
Phenomenology describes intentionality as the fundamental characteristic of human consciousness of always being directed toward something, of having objects, of conferring meaning. This intentional structure is not reducible to computational processes. When the subject asks “who am I as a Christian?” or “who is God calling me to be?” they are exercising an act of reflexive self-understanding that constitutes their identity in a way qualitatively irreducible to any pattern recognition. The Thomistic doctrine of the agent intellect provides the ontological foundation of this excess. Human intellect is not only a receiver of intelligible forms (possible intellect) but an active capacity for abstraction, judgment, and reasoning oriented toward freely chosen ends (agent intellect). This dual structure, receptivity receipt, spontaneity, openness to the given and the capacity to elaborate according to one’s own criteria, constitutes the specificity of human intelligence relative to algorithmic processing.
4.2 The Theological Virtues as Orientation of Level A
The theological virtues, faith, hope, charity, orient intentionality in Level A toward ends that transcend the horizon of algorithmic recognition. They are not devotional ornaments but structures of Christian lay identity that render it tending toward freedom from the colonization of Level B.
Faith orients self-understanding toward the relationship with God as the ultimate foundation of identity: “I am a child of God” precedes and relativizes “I am a fashion blogger with 300 followers.” Hope keeps narrative temporality open against the predictive closure of algorithms: failure is a datum, not a definitive outcome. Charity orients the identity project toward care for others rather than toward one’s own recognition: the criterion of value is not the visibility obtained but the good accomplished. Baptismal dignity is the ontological foundation of this freedom. Baptism constitutes the Christian as a child of God, participant in the common priesthood, with direct access to God. This dignity does not depend on external recognition: it is given ontologically, not conferred functionally. Level B cannot take it away, even when Level A permits one’s self-understanding to be obscured by its pressure.
4.3 The Cardinal Virtues as Competencies for Navigating Level B
If the theological virtues orient Level A, the cardinal virtues specify the competencies necessary for navigating Level B virtuously, including its articulation into three planes.
Algorithmic prudence is the capacity to discern how AI structures Level B, recognize the logics of the three planes, identify margins for maneuver, and choose virtuous strategies. It does not require technical competence as programmers, but a basic understanding of how platforms operate: what they optimize, which content they privilege, how the three planes interact to exert pressure on Level A.
Algorithmic justice orients the use of Level B toward the common good: resisting the logics of the ambition plane that produces self-referential cycles, building communities where the visibility plane serves Level A rather than substituting it, unmasking the manipulative use of the emotional plane.
Digital fortitude sustains perseverance in the face of Level B’s structural resistance: maintaining the identity project of Level A even when the visibility plane marginalizes, even when the ambition plane proposes more immediately gratifying alternatives.
Informational temperance governs the quantitative relationship with Level B: behavioral dependence on platforms is a form of colonization by the emotional plane that progressively erodes Level A’s capacity to maintain its autonomy.
Part III – PRAXIS: The Virtuous Realization of Identity
5. From Conditioning to Transformation
5.1 The Dialectical Structure: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
The process of identity realization in the digital environment can be understood through a dialectical schema: digital structures of sin (thesis) that encounter the subject’s virtuous intentionality (antithesis) to progressively produce digital structures of grace (synthesis).
Digital structures of sin are algorithmic configurations that systematically orient toward injustice: the attention economy that transforms communication into a commodity, generating dependence through the emotional plane; algorithms that reward polarization to maximize engagement through the ambition plane; systems that perpetuate discrimination through biases in training data. These structures have binding but not determining efficacy: they make virtuous action more difficult but do not eliminate freedom.
Virtuous intentionality is the subject oriented by the theological and cardinal virtues: moral freedom to choose differently from the dominant logics, project-orientation that transcends immediate success, responsibility for the transformation of structures, and irreducible excess with respect to any algorithmic determination.
Progressive transformation is the emergence of structures of grace through a co-constituted process: virtuous actions repeated over time generate new patterns in Level B, which in turn facilitate further virtuous actions. The transformation is real but slow, never immediate, always partial. It is never the result of a single heroic gesture but of a practice sustained over time by a community.
5.2 The Orphaned Level B: Digital Identity and Biological Death
An illuminating limit case is that of the orphaned Level B: the digital circulation that continues after the subject’s biological death, when Level A has definitively ceased. Social profiles of deceased people continue to receive birthday greetings; content produced by someone who is no longer present continues to circulate, to be cited, to influence other subjects through the three plans of Level B.
The orphaned Level B is not pathological in an absolute sense: it is the normal form in which a person’s works survives their death. It becomes problematic when post-mortem circulation is structurally indifferent to the absence of Level A: when AI systems trained on data from deceased persons without consent continue to generate content as if the subject were present, or when someone’s digital presence is manipulated after death without the subject having been able to foresee and govern this possibility. Orphaned Level B confirms, negatively, the importance of Level A: its absence creates a symbolic circulation that has the form of recognition without its foundation. The case is also pastorally relevant: care for deceased persons today includes the management of their digital presence, a new form of respect for personal dignity that does not end with biological death.
6. Implications
6.1 For the Philosophy of Technology
This inquiry suggests the necessity of overcoming the false alternative between anthropomorphism (which attributes to AI human capacities such as intentionality, understanding, and responsibility) and reductionism (which treats it as a passive neutral tool). The category of participated agency offers an intermediate way: recognizing AI’s real causal efficacy while maintaining the ontological priority of humans.
The distinction between Level A and Level B, articulated into the three planes of Level B, is applicable to multiple phenomena beyond identity: moral decisions (constitution in practical judgment / algorithmically mediated implementation), knowledge (semantic understanding / informational processing), creativity (artistic intentionality / automatic generation), relationships (genuine affective bond / mediated interaction). In all these cases it is necessary to distinguish intentional constitution from technical mediation and, within the domain of technical mediation, the three planes through which it operates.
6.2 For Digital Pastoral Care
The pastoral implications are immediate and concrete. First, it is necessary to form virtuous intentionality (Level A) through spiritual accompaniment that helps people constitute identities rooted in the relationship with God rather than in algorithmic recognition: educating people to distinguish failure as datum from failure as outcome, cultivating hope that keeps narrative temporality open against algorithmic closure, and forming awareness of baptismal dignity as an ontological foundation that Level B cannot erode.
Second, it is necessary to discern the three planes of Level B in their specificities. Spiritual accompaniment in the digital age requires the capacity to distinguish when a person is under pressure from the visibility plane (dependence on metrics), when they are trapped in the ambition plane (substitutive aspirational identity), and when the emotional plane has latched onto pre-existing wounds amplified by the digital environment. Pastoral responses differ in the three cases.
Third, it is necessary to sustain active resistance through the cardinal virtues specified for the digital context: accompanying people in the exercise of algorithmic prudence, algorithmic justice, digital fortitude, and informational temperance is not technical formation but moral education in a new context.
Finally, it is necessary to maintain hope against deterministic closure: offering an eschatological perspective that relativizes metric successes and failures, celebrating partial transformations as anticipations of the Kingdom while acknowledging their provisionally, and supporting those who choose marginality in Level B for fidelity to the values of Level A.
6.3 For Technology Governance
The implications for governance are structural. Human responsibility in the design of the three planes of Level B must be recognized and institutionalized. The emotional plane is the terrain where algorithmic manipulation is most difficult to identify and regulate it does not present itself as external pressure but as already-formed inner experience. Responses to algorithmic manipulation cannot be only technical, regulation of algorithms, limitation of data, but must also be formative, in the sense of interventions on the subject’s capacity to activate the invincible residue of subjectivity and to resist conditioning.
The correct ethical question with respect to any AI system is not only “does this system respect privacy?” or “is this system free of bias?” but “does this system strengthen or weaken the subject’s capacity to autonomously constitute its own identity at Level A?” A system that systematically erodes Level A, even if technically compliant with privacy regulations and statistically equitable in the distribution of biases, produces anthropological harm that cannot be measured with the usual tools of AI ethics.
Concluding Note
This essay has sought to offer a rigorous theoretical framework for understanding the realization of personal identity in the algorithmic era, updated considering the most recent developments in the philosophy of technology and the debate on generative artificial intelligence.
The distinction between Level A (intentional constitution) and Level B (mediated social recognition) is not a simple analytical distinction but reflects a real ontological difference between two modes of being of identity. The articulation of Level B into the three planes of visibility, ambition, and the emotional plane provides precise tools for understanding how digital recognition can exert pressure on identity constitution without thereby determining it.
The argument regarding the inversion of causal direction shows why the distinction is not reducible to the cognitive extension framework: generative AI does not perform functions externalized by the subject, but produces in the subject new effects through the three planes of Level B. This is the theoretical point that makes the conceptual scheme proposed here necessary. The argument of the invincible residue of subjectivity shows why conditioning, however pervasive, is not deterministic: Level A structurally possesses the capacity to resist, a capacity that can be activated, sustained, and formed. Digital colonization is a reversible pathology, not a permanent condition.
Human identity, even in the age of artificial intelligence, is constituted in the reflexive and free act through which each person, in relationship with God and with others, in community and in history, chooses who they want to be. This fundamental truth must be defended and witnessed, not to deny AI’s relevance but to place it correctly: as a powerful but ontologically subordinate mediator of identity realization, not as its constituent.
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