A Dual-Aspect Model of Subjectivity, Teleology, and Non-Libertarian Agency

This paper outlines a dual-aspect model of subjectivity and agency that rejects the 
standard division between libertarian free will, compatibilism, and mechanistic 
determinism. Living beings instantiate a single underlying substance with two 
inseparable aspects—physical and phenomenal. Subjectivity is the phenomenal 
interior of life itself, not an epiphenomenon of physical processes nor an independent 
mental substance. Within this framework, agency is the organism’s phenomenal 
expression of an immanent cosmic direction—teleonomy as the structural basis of 
teleology. Will is not free in the libertarian sense, nor reducible to mechanistic 
causation; it functions as the organism’s instrument for realizing intrinsic meaning. 
Drawing on Spinoza’s dual-aspect monism, Schopenhauer’s inner phenomenal force, 
Hans Jonas’s teleonomic biology, and contemporary emergence theory, the paper 
argues that a coherent, non-theistic, non-mechanistic account of agency is possible 
without invoking supernatural freedom or collapsing into reductive physicalism.

Keywords: dual‑aspect ontology, phenomenal interiority, internal teleology, stratified agency, non‑libertarian agency, biological phenomenality, philosophy of mind, metaphysics