itselfpositions

Itselfpositions is a neologism used to describe the set of positions, stances, or viewpoints that a subject designates for itself within a discourse, narrative, or model. The concept focuses on how an entity positions its own agency, identity, or attributes relative to others or to its own past or future states. The term is not widely standardized and appears in discussions of self-representation, metacognition, and agent modeling.

In literary analysis, itselfpositions refers to how a narrator or character locates themselves within the story world, shaping reliability, authority, and audience alignment. A first-person narrator may adopt a self-justifying or self-critical position, or hedge with disclaimers about certainty, thereby altering perceived truthfulness. In cognitive science and psychology, the notion can illuminate how individuals articulate their own beliefs, capabilities, or intentions. In artificial intelligence and robotics, it can describe a system’s self-model: how the agent represents its own limitations, goals, and possible actions, and how that self-model guides decision making.

Critically, because itselfpositions is not standardized, definitions vary across disciplines. Some treatments emphasize self-referential stance-taking, while others treat it as a component of broader discourse analysis or agent architecture. Related concepts include self-reference, metacognition, stance, and narrative voice.