Source Opacity: A Conceptual Synthesis Across Source Monitoring, Depersonalization/Derealization, Apraxia, and Active Inference

Across several otherwise disconnected literatures, a recurring asymmetry appears: the operations that enable experience and action are often not directly given to the subject as such. In source monitoring, attribution of origin is inferential rather than tag-based. In depersonalization/derealization, experience may be profoundly altered while reality testing remains intact. In apraxia, disruptions in action organization need not be accompanied by equivalent access to those disruptions. In active inference, the organization of action is modeled in terms of policies, precision, and generative structure rather than as something directly available in experience. These literatures do not describe the same phenomenon, nor do they operate at the same level of analysis. The aim of this article is therefore not to offer a complete explanation, but to isolate a recurring problem, demonstrate its conceptual convergence across four independent research literatures, and propose a name for it: source opacity.