Abstract
In many spheres of scholarship, including bioethics and neuroethics , there seems to be a significant misunderstanding involving the conflation of the metaphysical concept of free will with the moral–political concept of autonomy . Ever since Benjamin Libet published the results of his experiments measuring the timing of a decision to move by using electro-encephalography (Libet 1985), neuroscientific findings have been given a new impetus for metaphysical debates, which have mistakenly spilled over in practical philosophy .
This chapter draws and expands on my previous work which has been published as: Dubljević (2013).
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, there are many philosophers who willingly enter metaphysical discussions and link autonomy with free will. I am skeptical about the possibility that scientific evidence will resolve any metaphysical disputes, and believe that a pragmatic approach is implicit in ascriptions of responsibility within the legal and political system, and that such approach should also be taken in ethics, especially bioethics and neuroethics. My aim here is to make these implicit pragmatic assumptions more explicit. Henrik Walter (Walter 1999; Mueller and Walter 2010) has expressed somewhat similar views on autonomy, but he has not dissociated autonomy from metaphysical issues. Due to reasons of space, I limit my discussion to a reconstruction and extension of a Rawlsian political account of autonomy . Although similar approaches might be found elsewhere (e.g., Beauchamp and Childress 2009), Rawls was explicit in dissociating moral–political concepts from metaphysical quandaries.
- 2.
Felsen and Reiner start from the ‘hierarchical account’ of autonomy , and analyze three presuppositions of autonomy: (1) consistency with individual’s higher order beliefs; (2) rationality; and (3) relative independence from external biases. They conclude that executive control theory and empirical findings on the role of prefrontal cortex in decision making corroborate the first, and that the somatic marker hypothesis and the notion of ecological rationality offer an important addition to the second. For reasons of space, I do not deal with their arguments concerning the first two prerequisites, and limit my analysis to the alleged evidence from cognitive neuroscience that renders autonomy “quixotic.” It should be noted here that the discussion with Felsen and Reiner is not my primary motive , but merely an occasion to clarify the political notion of autonomy for neuroethics. Moffatt (2011), Jecker (2011), Walker (2011) have offered important criticism of Felsen and Reiner, with which I am very much in agreement. However, their discussions still leave the connection between autonomy and metaphysical commitments unclear, and I strive to make this aspect clear.
- 3.
I use reasonable throughout the text of this chapter as equivalent to appealing to reasons, such as standards, values, and principles that can be accepted as relevant by people who are trying to find ways of co-operating with each other on mutually acceptable terms. Compare Rawls (2005, Lecture IX) and Daniels (2008, 103–142).
- 4.
I use the notion of coercion in its classical “enforcement” form. For a good overview of the literature and counterintuitive results of different definitions of coercion see Anderson (2011). A further point has to be made here: Nordenfelt (2007) also uses the notion of compulsion to describe internal motivations of individuals, but he uses compulsion in a strictly negative or welfare-threatening sense in his analysis of psychopathologies. The concept used here is broader and incorporates both compulsions that are not negative (such as consuming oxygen) and those that disrupt rational life-plans (such as addiction to heroin).
- 5.
Vohs et al. (2008, 884) equate self-control and self-regulation (which is the literal translation of word autonomy ) and define it as “the self-exerting control to override a prepotent response, with the assumption that replacing one response with another is done to attain goals and conform to standards.” Moller et al. (2006), in their self-determination theory, make the distinction between self- control (which is ego-depleting) and self-regulation (which is not). I assume that further empirical research will resolve this debate, but regardless of the merits of their definitions, these studies make it clear that the basic political notion of autonomy has firm support in empirical literature.
- 6.
Walter Glannon provides important criticism to the so called argument from illusion, and offers a similar yet distinct definition that he (unfortunately) links with the compatibilist argument for free will. See Glannon (2007, 2011), respectively. Unlike Glannon , I claim that we need not take any stance on metaphysical disputes in order to ascribe responsibility.
- 7.
Norman Daniels (2008, 191–217) treats indirect coercion as quasi-coercion, while Emanuel et al. (2005) name it inducement and argue against conflating inducement and coercion. Although naming these forms of external influence differently might have merits, an important sense of these being instances of exercising outside control would get lost. Furthermore, abuse of state power in undemocratic societies shows that laws can and should be treated as forms of coercion that need to be justified.
- 8.
This example is loosely connected and adapted from Anderson’s (2011) analysis on the relation between stealing and property rights.
- 9.
Rawls (2005, 472, n) briefly discussed two types of voluntariness: rational and reasonable voluntariness. On this view, incentives and disincentives are never compromising rational voluntariness, whereas they might compromise reasonable voluntariness if the system makes it economically rational to act unfairly, for instance to seriously undercut a segment of the population based on arbitrary criteria. This could be an important point, but due to reasons of space I do not pursue it here.
- 10.
This “degrees of coercion” approach better explains our intuitions—at least better than the “lesser evil principle” (see Anderson 2011). One of the tests for diminishing responsibility through coercion that was proposed was limiting the responsibility of someone acting under coercion if she or he acts in a way that minimizes the total amount of harm. So, for instance, we might deny that a person is responsible for choosing to injure another to avoid being killed, but hold the person responsible if she or he chooses to kill someone to avoid being injured her- or himself. Though this reading of the lesser evil principle is intuitively plausible, it is not acceptable in non-coercive contexts. For instance, we do not permit one to seize a spare kidney from one individual to save the life of another. The “degrees of coercion” approach does a better job of explaining our intuitions because it presupposes justification through commensurability of types of coercion, not of harms.
- 11.
Oxygen is toxic to organisms that have evolved anaerobic metabolism. Even though theoretically humans could be so altered (say, to bear the rigors of space travel), then they would be unable to appreciate the environment for which humans have evolved or participate in even basic activities that many people find valuable, like having a picnic with the family.
- 12.
The capacity for reasoning presupposes “mental time travel” or capacity to think about past, present, and future (and this capacity has been empirically corroborated; see, e.g., Nyberg et al. 2010; Tulvin 2002) and not merely understanding of available affordances (Gibson 1986), or stimulus driven reactions, and so distinguishes the type of beings autonomy can be ascribed to. For instance, dogs are not autonomous, whereas most adult human beings are.
- 13.
It has to be noted here that the brain disease model was at the core of Felsen’s and Reiner’s (2011) claim that autonomy has to be reconsidered in the context of addiction .
- 14.
Glannon (2007, 40–42) recapitulated the objective details of this case.
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Dubljević, V. (2019). A Proposal for a Reconstruction of the Concept of Autonomy. In: Neuroethics, Justice and Autonomy: Public Reason in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13643-7_3
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