Education and training program in the hospital APR.pptx
Autonomy And Its Discontents
1. Autonomy
and Its
Discontents
In Autonomy, gender,
politics. pp.45-70
2. Chapter
Structure
This chapter offers a negative defense of
autonomy by responding to 6 critical
challenges, including:
• AU is impossible because there are no
selves
1. AU is impossible because human actions
are merely links in chains of interpersonal
interactions
2.AU is impossible because people cannot
understand themselves accurately
2
3. Chapter
Structure
3. AU is possible, but not genuinely
valuable: positively harmful
4. AU is possible and genuinely valuable,
but has been in practice restricted to
elite social groups
5. AU is possible and valuable,but can
be distorted in practice into
something harmful
6. AU is incompatible with other moral
goods
3
4. There are no
selves
AU is self-determination. If there
were no selves, then there would be no
selves who could determine
themselves
I shall argue that there are good
reasons for having some confidence at
the outset that the assumption of
selves is not entirely misguided.
4
5. Defend FP’s self
OB1: the doings of selves are events that can be
traced causally back to prior events or conditions
that are ultimately external to the selves, esp. the
socially interconnected nature of human
community could undermine the discreteness of
human selves
RE:
1. the feature of separate embodiment can be
separated discursively. self also have some
degree of coherent unity as a separate entity
5
6. Defend FP’s self
2. we must accept the existence of selves
if we wish to accept certain moral
practices
3. practical near impossibility of
extricating ourselves from modes of
thought and language that embody this
assumption
assume the existence of selves, and
•→
nearly all human beings are selves.
6
7. 1. Actions are links of
interpersonal
interaction
individual autonomy is actually socially
embedded: others would involve in when
one either makes choices or exercises
AU competency
this criticism could lead to 2 directions:
1. Because AU is socially embedded, AU is
not genuinely AU
2. reconceptualize AU in terms of its
connection with social relationships ★
7
8. Metaphysical
Concern
ultimately not really mine: my wants
and commitments are traceable, at
least in part, to causal conditions
outside of and other than myself
if the causal chain does not begin with
the agent herself, then in what sense is
it she who does the determining of
herself?
8
9. RE to MC
compatibilist answer: AU is a matter of degree
and requires agents simply to harbor the
capacities for certain sorts of reflection and
agency, however these were acquired or
interconnected with the agency of others. (p.37)
those reflective and practical capacities
together with wants and desires must constitute
a self who plays a determining role in the
processes leading to behavior.
causal embeddedment doesn’t undermine its
character as the kind of causal stage in the
process
9
10. understand
themselves
accurately
challenges the presumption that selves
can reliably understand their own
wants or values. Selves are not
transparently accessible to themselves.
the impossibility is due to human
inability to achieve the degree of self-
understanding and thereby the self-
reflection, that the ideal of autonomy
requires.
10
11. 2 sources
Psychoanalysis theorize that whole
dimensions of the self are opaque to
the self: misinterpretation or
inaccessible to conscious reflection
Social psychology: Lee Ross, Richard
Nisbett: the major flaw is a misguided
conception about what 'best explains
human behavior': situationism, not
dispositionism
11
12. RE to PA
PA is widely contested. Relying for
empirical support mainly on clinical
cases, P does not seem to warrant the
view that human self-understanding in
general is always flawed in ways that
render autonomy impossible.
12
13. RE to SP
Ross and Nisbett conceded that we can
have a great deal of predictive reliability on
people we well known. But they insisted
that our accurate everyday prediction of
behavior are based on implicit knowledge
of situation rather than knowledge of
character attributes.
Thus, RN's account does not preclude
accurate self understanding. It requires us
to rethink the evidentiary basis for such
understanding.
13
14. 3. Might be
harmful
The idea of autonomy is excessively
individualistic, and ultimately harmful.
achievement of isolated social atoms
and promote independence,
disconnection from interpersonal
involvement with others.→
interpersonal distancing and
adversaries by leading persons to
regard one another as threats.
14
15. Who is hurt and
What is the harm
the possessor of autonomy: by
detaching themselves from social
relationship, they abandon or destroy
the relationships on which they had
been depending for identity, survival
and flourishing
15
16. RE
1. If my earlier argument is right in
holding that persons depend on social
relationships for the development of
autonomy competency, then
autonomy need not require
disconnection from others
2. If she takes this approach, then she
will not be hurt by AU, but by her
loneliness
16
17. Who is hurt and
What is the harm
those with whom she interacts: Some who
seek autonomy might pull away from
relationships on which others depend for
survival or for the satisfaction of basic needs
RE: these wrongs arise only when the
autonomy seeker is someone who has
responsibilities to care for or protect others,
or to sustain committed relationships with
those others on which they rely emotionally
disconnect/ responsible: mere social
disconnection involves no failure to fulfill
responsibilities to others
17
18. Idealizing
individualistic AU
certain sorts of [autonomous]economic and
political behavior which lead some people
to behave in ways that may have an
oppressive impact on others who do not
behave in those ways. Ex. rational economic
man
18
19. Idealizing
individualistic AU
RE:
1. AU choice and actions are those that
accord with the deeper wants and values
the acting person has reflectively
reaffirmed and that are partly caused by
those self-reflections. nothing necessarily
requires aggressive competitiveness
2.Since autonomy is not the only morally
valuable ideal, such choices, even when
made autonomously, are always open to
moral criticism in other terms
19
20. AU=
superintendence
Walker: One becomes accountable for
managing oneself. Yet accountability,
suggests Walker, is accountability to
others.
RE: Not all conceptions of autonomy
connect autonomy to the capacity for
accountable self-superintendence in
accord with the normative
requirements of others
20
21. 4. in practice
only to elite
social group
For someone’s actions to cohere in
autonomous, she has to have options to
behave in ways that accord with what she
wants or values
It seems that substantial degrees of
autonomy have historically been largely
accessible only to those with an array of
significant alternative life prospects and the
education or training to reflect on such
things.
21
22. 4. in practice
only to elite
social group
2 aspects of this problem:
1. the good of autonomy has been
restricted to a privileged few
2. this social good has become available to
the privileged few through the exploited
labor
This line of criticism challenges the
fairness of social institutions in which
autonomy gas been embedded as an ideal.
22
23. 4. in practice
only to elite
social group
RE: the ideal of AU can be reformulated so
as to make it relevant to subordinated and
oppressed live.
Strategy: reconceptualize AU in light of the
experiences, wants, and commitments of
members of disadvantaged groups. those
who previously lacked opportunities to be
AU should become participants in
conversation about AU
The core nature of AU as self-reflective
agency can include goals of social progress
23
24. 5. be distorted
into something
harmful
some substitutes of AU may not be as
similar to AU as they first appear.
Critics of AU may legitimately wonder
whether AU is tarnished by its
practical association with inferior
substitute.
24
25. distortion in
substitutes
similarity: An autonomous person is
self-sufficient in ruling her life, and
being independent of the rule of
others.
the shortcoming of worshiping I and S:
they are often reduced to the activity
of earning an income→ cut back on
welfare→ women and the poor suffer
severe material deprivation
25
26. 2 responds to
troubling
substitutes
abandon AU altogether for practical
purposes
work harder to clarify the distinction
between AU and the other values
mistakenly substituted for it
Critics of AU opt too quickly for the
first alternative
26
27. Clarification
Everyday notion of independence and self-
sufficient: financial independence→ NOT
demanding that each person live by her
own values→ NOT constitutive part of
philosophical sense of AU→ AU is
independence of mind or behavior.
Thus, it is to criticize AU by the problem
of FI. The public wants welfare recipients
to find and hold income-holding job
whether or not this is what autonomy all
about
27
28. distortion in
application
AU be carried to excess:
1. undertake no action until she reflected
substantially: such results are hardly
grounds for dismissing AU for everyone
2. reflect on choices and actions exclusively
in terms of her own wants: AU overrides
other values: 2 sense
1. substantive sense→ selfish
2. procedural sense→ compatible with
caring deeply about the well-being of
others
28
29. 6. incompatible
with other moral
goods
This is an argument I do not reject.
I do not claim that AU is a supreme
value. Sometimes other value will be
more worthy of pursuit than autonomy.
ex. basic material well-being
29
30. Criticisms taken
together
attack on the value of AU seems an
inappropriate way to challenge liberalism.
The problem with L, at least sometimes,
are problem with practices that are
grounded in something other than liberal
principles, ex. racism, sexism
trap: go against master’s tools just because
they are those of the master.→ an ideal or
value is not necessarily corrupt just because
it is admired by dominant group→ it can be
authentic moral concern
30