[lit-ideas] Re: Autonomy (Was: Ethnic Pride, Black Truck Style)
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 13:58:12 -0230
True, for Kant there are no purely autonomous human agents. (Divine beings, for
whom there is no disctinction between "ought" and "is", are free, but not
autonomous.) Whether there are any autonomous acts is a question which Kant
believes we can never provide an answer for with any kind of certainty. The
moral imperative is to strive to will and act autonomously. (And if you need to
believe it, your reward will await you in the afterlife. Both Kant and Dawkins
claim this is a cop-out, of course.)
Phil provides an interesting interpretation of autonomy through Kant's Third
Critique and the notion of publicity, or the public character of an action. In
his actual moral theory, in differentiation from his later political and
aesthetic (political/aesthetic?) writings like the Third Critique, Kant
develops the notion of autonomy as a moral and epistemic ideal more in line
with John W's reading. On that reading, more in keeping with
the Groundwork and the Second Critique, autonomy is a feature of the good will
- understood as a disposition to will and choose from the imperative to respect
the autonomy and dignity of oneself and others as end-in-themselves.
I do not believe the two conceptions of autonomy are extensionally equivalent
since they present different connotations. Interestingly, both conceptions may
end up picking out the same actions despite this difference in intension. (Is
this a contradiction? Consider whether an action can be meant as a piece of
behavior abstracted from motive.) An action can be considered autonomous only
if it is public, in the manner Phil describes, AND the action is performed from
duty (i.e., out of the motive of respect for the above imperative).
In other words, an action may indeed accord with the form of reason but not be
motivated by the form of reason. Such a case would be an instance of heteronomy
in the sense in which John W describes. (It would also be a form of action that
accords with John Rawls's Political Liberalism, which had to choose between
autonomy-qua-publicity and autonomy-qua-motive, and opted for the latter. In a
democracy, reasons that you have for abiding by PL that originate within your
own comprehensive doctrine (cultural and/or religious worldview) are irrelevant
for public deliberation and maxims/policies. They remain valuable/useful for PL
in that they motivate people to abide by PL as a travelling "module.")
I would think that even our "private" affairs - i.e., concerns over and
interaction with friends and family - could satisfy the criterion of publicity
in that no action performed within this private context violated the entailed
epistemic requirement of universalizability. The agent would be "autonomous" in
that sense, but not in the sense of "autonomy" as a motive/feature of the will.
(This raises difficult questions concerning the extent to which Kant ever
granted that special obligations to family and friends may trump the duty to
act and will only from duty as defined by the Categorical Imperative/Principle
of Equal Respect for Persons).
A socialized adult whose motivations are based on the form of reason may be a
responsible agent who has appropriated the universalization principle as a
disposition, a virtue of character. Consequently, she doesn't need to ask in
each and every particular situation whether her maxim is self-contradictory,
exhibits illegitimate self-exemption, violates the Principle of Equal Respect
for Persons and can be legislated as universal law. A Kantian agent, in
differentiation from this computer, is not a blind, algorithm-loving,
rule-following automaton. One can "be an autonomous person" in a
dispositional sense. (Hegel was really out to lunch on that one.)
The idea that fields of inquiry can be autonomous I find to be an intelligible
and an educationally politically important idea. I believe that the idea of a
university is predicated on it in the sense that the sole motivation animating
inquirers must be the pursuit of truth, independently of the agendas of such
external agencies and groups as environing communities,
provincial and federal governements and pharmaceutical companies. (And
independently of salary, I might add. You don't want the wrong type of person
to be pursuing an academic career.) Moreover, any credible result of
inquiry must be submitted to "public" tests of criticism,
verification/falsification. Scholars must hence satisfy both
features necessary for genuine autonomy: publicity in outer results and right
reason/motivation as inner motivation for engaging in inquiry (and teaching, of
course.)
On vacation, but it doesn't look like it, I know. (If one is addicted to
thinking, can one be an autonomnous thinker? I used to be a social thinker
....)
Walter O.
MUN
Quoting Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> John Wager wrote:
>
> "I've always thought that what Kant had in mind was the motivation for
> an activity or action, not the action itself. One can do the right
> thing for "heteronomous" reasons, or for "autonomous" reasons. What
> makes this "public" in the sense you use the word above is that it's
> based on the form of reason itself, which is indeed "public" to
> everyone. It would be impossible easily to tell from the outside
> whether a person was acting from a morally relevant rule, or acting
> out of some other motivation. Some people just habitually "tell the
> truth" without thinking about it at all. Others see that this is a
> "rule" that one should give one's self and see why; this is an
> "autonomous" individual."
>
> This is all pretty slippery. For example, if as John suggests the
> emphasis is on motivation, then we would expect the autonomous
> individual to be one whose motivations are largely based on the form
> of reason. But how much of an individual's life is comprised of
> motivations that could be based on the form of reason? I like to
> think of myself as relatively sensitive to ethical issues but a very,
> very small part of my day is taken with authentic ethical encounters.
> Most of my day is taken up with work obligations, family obligations
> and personal pursuits. In other words, the vast majority of my life
> is not public, but private. Occasionally I am faced with an ethical
> dilemma and then I like to think I act autonomously. I just don't see
> that as being sufficient grounds for calling myself an autonomous
> individual. And I find it impossible to imagine a socialized adult
> whose motivations are largely based on the form of reason.
>
> It gets more messy if we try and figure exactly how to distinguish
> between motivation and act. After all, a motivation is always a
> motivation to do something in particular. In the Third Critique, Kant
> suggests that a way of evaluating the universal character of our own
> judgment is to adopt the standpoint of others. If we are to do this,
> it seems that the very idea of motivation collapses into the act since
> when we take up the standpoint of an other, we take up their
> standpoint vis a vis a particular act. It seems to me to make more
> sense to distinguish between autonomous and heteronomous acts since
> motivation and act can be structurally distinguished but not isolated.
> As I said motivation is always motivation to do something. And acts
> have attendant motivations so that when someone acts we can usually
> ascribe motivation. We can therefore identify actions as ethical as
> opposed to private because we usually have a pretty good idea of the
> motives attending those actions.
>
> What counts as ethical is never certain and always open to debate, but
> enough agreement exists to make judgments regarding human activity. I
> just don't think it make sense to apply this judgment to people.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Phil Enns
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