Online research in philosophy

This collection of original essays explores the social and relational dimensions of individual autonomy. Rejecting the feminist charge that autonomy is inherently masculinist, the contributors draw on feminist critiques of autonomy to challenge and enrich contemporary philosophical debates about agency, identity, and moral responsibility. The essays analyze the complex ways in which oppression can impair an agent's capacity for autonomy, and investigate connections, neglected by standard accounts, between autonomy and other aspects of the agent, including self-conception, self-worth, memory, and the imagination.

Of liberty and necessity, by D. Hume.--The doctrine of necessity examined, by C. S. Peirce.--Determinism in history, by E. Nagel.--Some arguments for free will, by T. Reid.--Has the self free will? by C. A. Campbell.--Dialogue on free will, by L. de Valla.--Can the will be caused? by C. Ginet.--Free will, by G. E. Moore.--A modal muddle, by S. N. Thomas.--Determinism, indeterminism, and libertarianism, by C. D. Broad.--An empirical disproof of determinism? by K. Lehrer.--Free will, praise and blame, by J. J. C. Smart.--Bibliographical essay.

I argue that free will and determinism are compatible, even when we take free will to require the ability to do otherwise and even when we interpret that ability modally, as the possibility to do otherwise, and not just conditionally or dispositionally. My argument draws on a distinction between physical and agential possibility. Although in a deterministic world only one future sequence of events is physically possible for each state of the world, the more coarsely defined state of an agent and his or her environment can be consistent with more than one such sequence, and thus different actions can be “agentially possible”. The agential perspective is supported by our best theories of human behaviour, and so we should take it at face value when we refer to what an agent can and cannot do. On the picture I defend, free will is not a physical phenomenon, but a higher-level one on a par with other higher-level phenomena such as agency and intentionality.

Our discussion in the first five sections shows that little new can be said about compatibilism, that van Inwagen's argument for incompatibilism still stands, and that the view of free agency for a libertarian has little chance unless she believes that agency contains elements that are not within the natural order. Borrowing from a suggestion from Russell we expanded the Nozick-Kane model of libertarian free agency and connected it to the Wignerian interpretation of quantum measurement. As such, free decisions and choices may well violate the Born rule of probability distribution and yet it is shown how such violations are unlikely to be detected in experiments. This model is probably the only model in which Loewer's van Inwagen style argument for the incompatibility between free agency and quantum indeterminism does not apply, and it is a model in which free agency is not only compatible but necessary. It is compatible with indeterminism and it is necessary for the determinateness of any measurement outcomes.

The received view in medical contexts is that informed consent is both necessary and sufficient for patient autonomy. This paper argues that informed consent is not sufficient for patient autonomy, at least when autonomy is understood as a "relational" concept. Relational conceptions of autonomy, which have become prominent in the contemporary literature, draw on themes in the thought of Charles Taylor. I first identify four themes in Taylor's work that together constitute a picture of human agency corresponding to the notion of agency implicit in relational accounts of autonomy. Drawing on these themes, I sketch two arguments against the position that informed consent secures autonomy. The first is that informed consent is an "opportunity" concept whereas autonomy is an "exercise" concept; the second is that informed consent requires merely weak evaluation and not strong evaluation. On Taylor's analysis of agency, strong evaluation is required for agency and for autonomy.

In two influential articles setting forth his arguments against restrictions on free expression in the 1970s, Harvard philosopher T. M. Scanlon suggested and later rejected the notion that autonomous agency ought to be a primary constraint on most justifications used to restrict speech. The concept of autonomy, he said, was “notoriously vague and slippery” as a basis for judging free-speech restrictions. Instead, Scanlon argued that free expression—and proposed restrictions on it—should be justified in terms of our various “interests” in speech as participants and as audience members. Reliance on autonomy does not provide the justificatory force for a theory of free expression, he said. However, in his landmark 1998 book, What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon relies heavily on autonomous agency as the foundation of several of his key claims. Scanlon’s claims that our “interests” to protect free expression conflict with his reliance on autonomous agency in What We Owe to Each Other and have important implications for efforts both to cultivate a healthy public sphere and protect the open architecture of the Internet within an increasingly global media culture.

If the incompatibilist is right, determinism annuls free will, but not necessarily autonomy. The possibly deterministic origin of values and beliefs that are objectively grounded does not undermine the autonomy of agents who maintain these for the right reasons. Nonobjective perspectives—preferences about lifestyle, profession, choice of mate— cannot anyway be entirely removed even for an unlimited being. Moreover, if one were lucky to have inherited contingencies that mesh perfectly with the world one happened to inhabit even if it is deterministic, one would have the capacity for perfect autonomy. The extreme incompatibilist position that autonomy requires creation of self ex nihilo is incoherent.

Free will and powers -- Powers and possibilities -- Agency and responsibility -- The conditional analysis of free will -- Abilities and control -- Free will and reasons -- Intelligibility -- Rationality -- Spontaneity -- The determination of the self -- Some concluding remarks on autonomy and free will.