Center, Horizon, and "Taking a Stand": A Phenomenological Map of Decision Episodes

This paper offers a phenomenological description of how conscious decision episodes are structured when we experience ourselves as facing a live choice and "taking a stand." Drawing on Husserl's object–horizon structure, Gurwitsch's theme/field/margin, and James's focus/fringe, I argue that such episodes instantiate an i-structure: a center–horizon pattern in which (i) a minimal focal node represents "this situation" as a unified whole and (ii) a surrounding field or horizon encodes articulated considerations, constraints, and practical possibilities. Over this structure, two gradients of determinacy can be discerned: identity determinacy (how settled "what this is" is), increasing toward the center, and affordance determinacy (how settled "what I can still do" is), increasing toward the horizon or periphery. In live decisions, there is a phase in which the situation is firmly experienced as "this decision now," yet more than one option remains experientially live. I call the transition from such a phase to settled commitment an authored resolution: an instance of "taking a stand" that is not mandated by reasons alone, not felt as random or alien, and experienced as "my doing." I suggest that this structural map should be acceptable to both compatibilist and libertarian accounts of agential sourcehood and that making the experiential and structural shape of "up to me" decision episodes more explicit helps clarify what is at issue when we say that agents "author" their commitments.