All human affairs assume a priori that people are conscious agents, and that our perspective genuinely makes a difference to behavior. Yet natural science has been in apparent tension with this genuine subjectivity, because in principle nothing but material processes are measurable in our bodies. I therefore propose a novel framework centered on the prospect that the role of mental activity is related to an underdetermination of the material properties of our living embodiment. The upshot of irruption theory is that we are conscious agents who can rely on our first-person perspective to make an effective difference with our embodied actions, yet without being able (nor needing) to directly control our body’s material processes.