Personal Autonomy

First published Tue May 28, 2002; substantive revision Thu Feb 15, 2018

Autonomous agents are self-governing agents. But what is aself-governing agent? Governing oneself is no guarantee that one willhave a greater range of options in the future, or the sort ofopportunities one most wants to have. Since, moreover, a person cangovern herself without being able to appreciate the difference betweenright and wrong, it seems that an autonomous agent can do somethingwrong without being to blame for her action. What, then, are thenecessary and sufficient features of this self-relation? Philosophershave offered a wide range of competing answers to this question.

1. Introduction

When people living in some region of the world declare that theirgroup has the right to live autonomously, they are saying that theyought to be allowed to govern themselves. In making this claim, theyare, in essence, rejecting the political and legal authority of thosenot in their group. They are insisting that whatever power theseoutsiders may have over them, this power is illegitimate; they, andthey alone, have the authority to determine and enforce the rules andpolicies that govern their lives.

When an individual makes a similar declaration about some sphere ofher own life, she, too, is denying that anyone else has the authorityto control her activity within this sphere; she is saying that anyexercise of power over this activity is illegitimate unless sheauthorizes it herself. Most of the reasons that can be offered insupport of this claim have correlates in the case of demands for groupautonomy. But there is one very important exception: a reason thattakes us beyond politics, to the metaphysics of agency.

An agent is one who acts. In order to act, one must initiate one’saction. And one cannot initiate one’s action without exercising one’spower to do so. Since nothing and no one has the power to act exceptthe agent herself, she alone is entitled to exercise this power, if sheis entitled to act. This means that insofar as someone is an agent,i.e., insofar as she is one who acts—she is correct to regardher own commitments to acting, her own judgments and decisions abouthow she should act, as authoritative. Indeed, if she were to challengethe authority that is an essential feature of her judgments anddecisions, then they would cease to be her own practical conclusions.Their power to move her would cease to be a manifestation of her powerto move herself; it would not be the power of her own agency.

In short, every agent has an authority over herself that isgrounded, not in her political or social role, nor in any law orcustom, but in the simple fact that she alone can initiate her actions.To be sure, it might be unwise for someone to follow the commands shegives to herself when she “makes up her mind.” The point,however, is that she has no conceivable option. In order to form anintention to do one thing rather than another, an agent must regard herown judgment about how to act as authoritative—even if it isonly the judgment that she should follow the command or advice ofsomeone else. This tight connection between being an agent and havingauthority has no correlate in cases where the authority at issue ispolitical. Anyone can coherently (and often plausibly) challenge thepolitical authority of some individual or group. Even a politicalleader herself can with good reason believe that her political power isillegitimate, and that exercising this power is unjustified.

Despite the special inalienable nature of our authority overourselves, it is possible for us to fail to govern ourselves, just asit is possible for a political leader to fail to govern those who fallwithin her domain. Indeed, precisely because our authority over our ownactions is an intrinsic feature of our agency, our deference to thisauthority is but theform of self-government. It is no guarantee thatwhenever we act, the forces that move us owetheir power toour power to decide what to do. Just as a political leader’sofficial status is compatible with her having no real power to call theshots, so too, a person can have an authoritative status with respectto her motives without having any real power over them. Though it is anagent’s job to determine how she will act, she can do this job withoutreally being in control. Of course, no one can govern herself withoutbeing subject to influences whose power does not derive from her ownauthority: everything we do is a response to past and presentcircumstances over which we have no control. But some of the forcesthat move us to act do not merely affect which actions we choose toperform, nor how we govern ourselves in making these choices. Theyinfluence us in a way that makes a mockery of our authority todetermine our own actions. They undermine our autonomy.

What distinguishes autonomy-undermining influences on a person’sdecision, intention, or will from those motivating forces that merelyplay a role in the self-governing process? This is the question thatall accounts of autonomy try to answer. As the number and variety ofthese accounts indicate, the distinction is extremely elusive. There iscertainly widespread agreement about the paradigm threats to personalautonomy: brainwashing and addiction are the favorite examples in thephilosophical literature. But philosophers seem unable to reach aconsensus about the precise nature of these threats. They cannot agreeabout how it is that certain influences on our behavior prevent us fromgoverning ourselves.

This disagreement about the defining characteristics of autonomousagency reflects the fact that even as concrete examples appear to callattention to a very real difference between those who govern themselvesand those who do not, there are significant conceptual obstacles tomaking sense of this distinction. These obstacles are tied to the veryfeature of agency mentioned above—the feature that appears tosupport the demand that individuals be granted considerable politicaland legal power. If an agent fails to govern herself when she acts,this must be because what she does is independent of her power todetermine how she will act. But if she necessarily has the authority todetermine how she will act, and if this essential feature of agency isinseparable from the fact that she necessarily defers to herselfwhenever she initiates her action, then how can her behavior possiblyescape her control? Intuitively, an agent can fall under the sway ofdesires, or urges, or compulsions whose power is at odds with her ownpower as an agent; she can be moved by such impulses “in spite ofherself.” But in what sense, exactly, are such motives“external” to the agent herself? How cantheirpower to move her fail to be a manifestation ofher power toact? How can their power reduce her authorization of her action to amere formality? It is difficult to answer these questions when thegoverning agent and the agent she governs are one and the same.

(Again, the perplexity to which these questions give voice does nothave a correlate in the political case. We can easily grasp the idea ofa country’s army (or legislative body, or cabinet ministers) dictatingto the president what legislation he must approve; for in this casethere are (at least) two independently identifiable decision-makers—each with its own point of view, each with its own power. Thedifficulty in the case where the relevant powers are all within thepsyche of a single individual agent is that there is no suchindependently identifiable pair of standpoints in terms of which we candistinguish the powers that bully this agent from the powers that canbe attributed to the agent herself. An account of the conditions underwhich an individual agent is bullied by her motives is, at the sametime, an account of what makes a motive external to the agent’s ownstandpoint.)

2. Four More or Less Overlapping Accounts of Personal Autonomy

Philosophers have proposed many different accounts of the autonomousagent’s special relation to her own motives. According to oneprominent conception, which one might call“coherentist,” an agent governs her own action ifand only if she is motivated to act as she does because thismotivation coheres with (is in harmony with) some mental state thatrepresents her point of view on the action. The relevant mental statevaries from account to account. According to one popular story, anagent’s point of view is constituted by her highest-order desiresregarding which of her first-order desires moves her toact. (Frankfurt 1988c)^[1] According to another story, her point ofview is constituted by her (contemporaneous or long-term) evaluativejudgments regarding which actions are (most) worth performing. (Watson 1975)^[2] Stillanother account adds that there must also be harmony between what theagent does and her more or less long-term plans (Bratman 1979 and2007). And others appeal to the relatively stable network ofemotional states constitutive of “caring” (Frankfurt 1988fand 1999d, Jaworska, Shoemaker 2003)^[3] or to the agent’s character traits(Dworkin, R.), or to her most thoroughly “integrated”psychological states (Arpaly and Schroeder).

All these accounts reflect the intuition that an action cannot beattributed to the agent herself if, even as she performs this action,she occupies a point of view from which she repudiates what she isdoing. More carefully, such an action cannot be the agent’s doing inthe way that it must be if it is to qualify as an instance ofself-government. According to this intuition, if someone repudiates,or in some other way dissociates herself from, the causal efficacy ofher own motives, then the power of these motives is independent of herauthority. If, on the other hand, she endorses these motives, whetherimplicitly or explicitly, then her actions occur with her permission,if not necessarily at her command. Under what conditions does someonecount as endorsing or repudiating her motives? Each account offers adifferent answer to this question.

Not only does there appear to be a tight conceptual connection betweenself-governing agency andsynchronic psychic unity; therealso appears to be a connection between self-governing agency andthediachronic unity of one’s later self with one’s earlierself. This is the connection central to accounts that identifyself-governing agents with agents constrained by plans, or bywell-integrated emotions, or traits of character. Agents persistthrough time; and so, these accounts stress, an agent’s point of viewis not simply a function of whatever mental state(s) she happens to bein at some point in time. Because an agent’s plans play a crucial rolein ensuring that she is more than a mere collection or sequence ofmental states, it is reasonable to think that whether her motives haveher support depends on whether they are constrained by these plans.So, too, it is reasonable to think that her stance toward her motivesis determined by her long-term values and/or her relatively stablecommitments and cares.

On a strict coherentist conception of autonomy, autonomous agents canbe moved by desires they are helpless to resist: though an addict failsto govern herself if she would rather resist her irresistible urge totake drugs, she is an autonomous agent if she has no objection to heraddiction and its motivational effects. According to the coherentist,moreover, both the origin and the content of a person’s higher-orderattitudes (evaluative judgments, plans) are irrelevant to whether sheis an autonomous agent. She need have done nothing to bring it aboutthat she has these attitudes; and the attitudes need not be especiallyrational or well-informed. Coherentist accounts are thus doublyinternalist. They express the intuition that whether we governourselves depends on neither how we came to be who we are (a fact thatis prior to (and in this sense external to) the action itself) nor howour beliefs and attitudes relate to reality (a fact that is independentof (and in this sense external to) the beliefs and attitudesthemselves). In other words, on these accounts, there need be no specialrelation between our autonomy-constituting attitudes and either thepast circumstances that caused these attitudes or the presentcircumstances in response to which they move us to act.

Other accounts of autonomy introduce conditions that areexternalist in one or both of these ways. According to thosewho advocate areasons-responsive conception of autonomous agency, anagent does not really govern herself unless her motives, or the mentalprocesses that produce them, are responsive to a sufficiently widerange of reasons for and against behaving as she does. (Fischer and Ravizza, Nelkin, Wolf)^[4] On accountsof this type, an agent who is unresponsive to the reasons for“standing behind,” or “backing up,” certainmotives and not others is not in the proper position to authorize herown actions. Whether the relevant reasons are grounded in facts abouther own desires and interests, or whether they have some independentsource, the idea is that someone is not qualified to govern herself ifshe cannot understand what she (really) has reason to do, or (if thisis a distinct handicap) is incapable of being moved by these reasons.In effect, her exercise of authority is so ill-conceived that it ispowerless to confer legitimacy on her motives.

The feature of these accounts that most distinguishes them fromcoherentist accounts is the importance they attribute to an agent’sability to appreciate the reasons she has. (Once she appreciates thesereasons, her inability to act accordingly is, essentially, theinability to conform her act to her own judgment, and to hercorresponding (higher-order) desire.) What, exactly, is the connectionsupposed to be between being out of touch with (evaluative and/ornonevaluative) reality and failing to govern oneself? Clearly, a personwho fails to appreciate a wide range of reasons for action is unlikelyto govern herselfwell: she is likely to do things that will,in the long run, thwart her own purposes and interests. Thereasons-responsiveness conception of autonomy thus appears toreflect the intuition that when we do something very poorly, we do notreally do it at all. There is, however, another possible underlyingrationale for regarding ignorance as a threat to self-government. IfdoingY is constitutive of doingZ, then if Iauthorize myself to be moved by the desire to doY because Imistakenly believe that doingY is a way ofnot doingZ, then there is an obvious sense in which I have notauthorized myself to do what I am now doing when I am moved by thedesire to doY. So, if I have a general desire to do what isright and prudent, or, even more generally, a desire to do what I canjustify to myself (and others), or, more generally still, a desire tobe responsive to reasons, then insofar as I am moved to act in waysthat are, in fact, incompatible with satisfying these desires, thereis a sense in which I—who am committed to doing only what Ihave good (enough) reason to do—have not really authorized myaction. Alternatively, we could say that, under these circumstances,something external to my power to guide myself by reasons hasprevented me from exercising this power, and so has prevented me fromgoverning myself.^[5]

An additional source of support for the reasons-responsiveconception of autonomy comes from the thought that someone who cannotrespond to the reasons there are must have a limited ability to reason.This brings us to a third popular approach to autonomous agency—an approach that stresses the importance of the reasoning process itself (Christman 1991, 1993 and Mele 1993, 1995).^[6] According toresponsiveness-to-reasoning accounts, the essence ofself-government is the capacity to evaluate one’s motives on the basisof whatever else one believes and desires, and to adjust these motivesin response to one’s evaluations. It is the capacity to discern what“follows from” one’s beliefs and desires, and to actaccordingly. One can exercise this capacity despite holding falsebeliefs of all kinds about what one has reason to do. Accordingly, onthese accounts, being autonomous is not the same thing as being guidedby correct evaluative and normative judgments.

The emphasis on an autonomous agent’s responsiveness to her ownreasoning reflects the intuition that someone whose education consistedof a method of indoctrination that deprived her of the ability to callher own attitudes into question would, in effect, be governed by her“programmers,” not by herself. So, too, someone whosepractical reasoning was directly manipulated by others would not governherself by means of this reasoning. And so, it seems, she would have nopower over the motives that this reasoning produced.

Like the coherentists, advocates of responsiveness-to-reasoningaccounts believe that the key to autonomous agency is the ability todistance oneself from one’s attitudes and beliefs—to occupy astandpoint that is not constituted by whatever mental states are movingone to act. They agree that motives authorized from this reflectivestandpoint are internal to the agent herself in a way that her othermotives are not. Unlike the coherentists, however, thereasoning-responsive theorists believe that there is more to thecapacity for self-reflection than the capacity to hold higher-orderattitudes. The authority of our higher-order attitudes is grounded,they claim, in the authority of the practical reasoning that supportsthese attitudes. So a self-governing agent does not merely endorse hermotives: her endorsements are implicit claims about which motives havethe support of her reason.

This fact is closely tied to another. Like many accounts that stressan autonomous agent’s responsiveness to reasons, responsiveness-to-reasoning accounts often suggest that self-government requires thecapacity for self-transformation. On this assumption, an autonomousagent is someone who can change her mind when she discovers good reasonto do so.^[7] In contrast, strict coherentists insist thatit is possible to act autonomously while being moved by desires thatare not only irresistible when they produce their effects, but sointegral to one’s identity that one could not possibly will to resistthem.^[8]

The conception of autonomous agency as responsiveness to reasoningclearly has a more internalist character than the conception ofautonomous agency as responsiveness to reasons: according to those whostress the autonomous agent’s ability to evaluate her own motives, whatcounts is not the relation between the agent’s attitudes and externalreality, but her ability to draw inferences from what she wants andbelieves, and by so doing, to reconsider—to rationally reflectupon—her other desires and beliefs. Insofar, however, as aresponsiveness-to-reasoning account presupposes a particular conceptionof practical reasoning, it appeals to standards, or principles, thatthe agent herself might misapply, or fail to recognize altogether.Moreover, even if advocates of autonomy as responsiveness-to-reasoninghave nothing in particular in mind when they speak of the process of“reflection,” “rational evaluation,” etc.,reasoning is a norm-governed process that an agent might reject forreasons of her own. Responsiveness to reasoning accounts thus containan externalist element that is absent from strict coherentist accounts.They imply that an agent can be mistaken about whether she is reallyreasoning—and so can be mistaken about whether the power of hermotives reflects the fact that she has the authority to determine herown actions.

This weak externalism naturally expands into more robust varieties.In particular, it supports the idea that whether an agent’s reasoningis really her way of governing her actions depends on whichforces exert a nonrational influence on this reasoning. Even whenindoctrination and other more or less imaginary forms of “mindcontrol” do not prevent a person from reaching evaluativeconclusions about her own motives, they can prevent her from thinkingfor herself. So, too, it seems, someone in the grip of compulsion oraddiction can be so dominated by this condition that whatever facts sheconsiders, and whatever conclusions she draws, cannot legitimately beattributed to her. One way to interpret these cases is to say that theperson’s reasoning falls so far short of the norms of “rationalreflection” that she is not really reasoning at all.Alternatively, one can say that her reasoning does not guarantee herautonomy because it is under the control of external forces.

Insofar as accounts of autonomy simply stipulate that certaininfluences on an agent’s intention-forming process “interferewith,” or “pervert,” this process, these accountsare incomplete. For they leave it mysterious why certain influences,and not others, are a threat to self-government. One response to thischallenge is offered by reasons-responsive accounts: according to thisresponse, the autonomy-undermining influences are the ones thatprevent the reasoning process from being sufficiently sensitive to thereasons there are.^[9]Another – compatible – response appeals to the“relational” aspects of autonomy: other agents can preventsomeone’s reasoning from qualifying as a mode of self-government bypreventing the reasoner from developing the self-respect and/orself-trust necessary for forming a point of view that is truly herown (Benson 1994, 2000, Mackenzie and Stoljar, Anderson and Honneth)^[10]. If an agent’s point of view does not reflect her respect forherself and for her ability to set her own ends and assess the reasonsrelevant to pursuing some ends and not others, then the direction herreasoning takes cannot be attributed to her. (Though relationalaccounts of autonomy highlight the extent to which an agent’s capacityto govern herself depends on her interactions with other agents, it isimportant to note that self-respect and self-trust can also beundermined by experiences or psychological conditions that do notinvolve the actions of anyone else.)

A fourth conception of personal autonomy offers a very differentresponse to the challenge of distinguishing (i) the determining causesthat prevent an agent from governing herself when she employs herreason from (ii) the causes that determine how an agent governsherself when she reasons. According to thisincompatibilistconception, each of these influences undermines the agent’s autonomy;cases of mind control simply call our attention to the fact thatwhenever our motives are causally determined by events over which wehave no control, their power does not reflect ourauthority. (Pereboom) According to incompatibilists, if our actionscan be fully explained as the effects of causal powers that areindependent of us, then even if our beliefs and attitudes are amongthese effects, we do not govern them, and so we do not governourselves. (Kane 1996 and van Inwagen1983)^[11]

Incompatibilist accounts of autonomy take many subtly differentforms. So do the three other (compatibilist) accounts mentioned here.Some of the differences reflect disagreements over the extent to whichthe relevant conditions—coherence among higher- andlower-order attitudes, responsiveness to reasons, responsiveness toreasoning, freedom from determination by external causes—mustactually obtain when an agent determines her will, or whether it isenough that under certain specified circumstances theagentwould relate to her motives in the stipulated manner.There is also a difference of opinion about the scope of the relevantcapacities: Must an autonomous agent be capable of responding to awide range of reasons for and against her action? or is it enough thather motives are responsive to the “strongest,” “mostcompelling” reasons? and can these reasons include the sort ofcredible threats that figure in cases of coercion? What range ofattitudes must an autonomous agent be capable of calling intoquestion? How well must she be capable of reasoning? Does it matterwhether she is guided by certain principles of rationality? Must it bepossible for her to draw different conclusions on the basis of thereasons she considers? Is it essential that she could have considereda different set of reasons instead?

There are even disagreements over whether the reasons to whichself-governing agents respond are, as most assume, practicalconsiderations concerning what to do, or what is worth doing. It hasbeen suggested that agents govern their actions by engaging intheoretical reasoning to the end of forming beliefs about which modesof behavior they could explain, given their desires. (Velleman) This suggestionstresses the extent to which governing oneself involves deferring topsychic demands whose power is independent of one’s authority. On thispicture, an agent exercises authority over what she does only once sheis faced with a set of possible actions, whose possibility reflectstheir compatibility with the causal power of her desires: in predictingthat she will perform one of these actions, she authorizes this action,and thereby strengthens her motives for performing it.^[12]

This way of interpreting the link between autonomous agency andresponsiveness to reasons raises larger questions about therelationship between our practical impulses and our reason. Theanswers to these questions, and to those mentioned above can becombined in many different ways. Not only, moreover, can eachapproach thus take a wide variety of forms, but the approachesthemselves can (and often do) figure together as necessary orsufficient conditions in a single complex account.

3. Challenges to Identifying the Minimal Conditions of Personal Autonomy

All the proposals just considered contribute to our understandingof the various roles that agents can play in theirown actions. They articulate various ideals that agents can realize tovarious degrees when they act. In so doing, they shed light on how,with the proper training, a very young child, whose deference to theauthority of her own judgments is little more than theform ofself-government, can develop into an exemplary self-governing agent.

This is a very important contribution. Nonetheless, it falls shortof giving us everything we have reason to expect from an account ofpersonal autonomy. In particular, challenges to the differentapproaches sketched above suggest that they do not spell out theminimal conditions under which a person’s exercise of authority overhow she behaves reflects her own power to determinehowshe exercises this authority. Minimal self-government seems torequire nothing more nor less than being the power behind whateverreasoning directly gives rise to one’s behavior. Yet none of theaccounts we have canvassed here seems to capture this important, mostbasic, form of self-government. Nor, it seems, does any combination ofthese accounts.

The worry that the coherence of one’s contemporaneous attitudes doesnot suffice for even minimal self-government is grounded in theapparent possibility that a person could be brainwashed, or otherwisecompelled, to endorse a given motive. Indeed, her brain could bemanipulated in such a way that each of her endorsements is highlyresponsive to reasons. This has led some philosophers to supplementcoherentist accounts of autonomy with additional conditions that placeconstraints on the causal history of an agent’s endorsements,constraints of the very sort singled out in theresponsiveness-to-reasoning accounts. These supplements face asignificant challenge, however: it is very difficult to spell out thedistinction between autonomy-conferring reasoning andautonomy-undermining reasoning without implicitly appealing tothe very phenomenon one is trying to explain.

Even if historical approaches to autonomy can successfully overcomethis difficulty, they do nothing to address the fact that coherence isnot even necessary for autonomous agency. An agent need not sacrificeher autonomy in order to decide to act contrary to her long-termcommitments and concerns; acting “out of character” is nota sufficient condition for failing to govern oneself. Though a“weak-willed” agent is hardly a paradigm example ofsomeone who governs herself when she acts, she too plays a decisiverole in the relative power of her own motives; she authorizes herbehavior, even though she believes that she has good reason to actotherwise. It is notoriously difficult to make sense of such anexercise of authority.^[13] For our purposes here, however, itsuffices to note that if weakness of will is a genuine phenomenon,then human agents have the capacity to govern themselves in a way thatthey themselves take to be unjustified. They can assert an authorityover themselves that challenges the authority of their very ownreason.

Of course, someone whose action is caused in this way does notgovern herself asthoroughly as someone whose will is“strong”; she acts for a reason that she herself deemsinadequate; and so she is not (adequately) governed by the norms of herown thought. Nonetheless, even under these conditions, the desires thatmove her to act do so on her own authority. To use what is perhaps themost important metaphor in the literature on personal autonomy, theweak-willed agent “identifies with” her motives in whateverway she must in order to be accountable for their effects. It is notsimply that what she does is the result of an earlier autonomousaction. Rather, her accountability is grounded in her contemporaneousrelation to what she is doing.

The possibility of weakness of will points to the more general factthat an agent’s authorization of her own motives need not take theform of the judgment that it would not be better to act otherwise.Various forms of perversity are perfectly compatible with autonomousagency. Some philosophers believe that it is also possible for agentsto defy their own contemporaneous normative verdicts without defyinganything very deep about themselves. A woman, for example, mayconclude that even though she has an overriding reason to give up herchild for adoption, she cannot recognize herself in this action, andso cannot identify with the desire to perform it.^[14]Reasonable people will surely disagree about how best to interpret anyparticular example. But human experience does seem to support thegeneral point: the human capacity for self-reflection enables humanagents to distance themselves in thought from every aspect of theirown psyches—even their rational reflections. Given thispossibility, a person’s identification with her motives cannot becashed out in terms of higher-order attitudes of approval anddisapproval, or in terms of the rational reflections that typicallyground these attitudes.

Similar concerns are raised by the appeal to plans. Though plansoften enable a person to exercise some measure of control over her lifeas a whole, a person can govern herself at a particular time even whiledefying her earlier attempts to place constraints on how she willgovern herself at this time. She can take it upon herself to abandonher plans, or to modify them in ways she did not anticipate when shefirst made them. She can even reject the counsel of the long-termvalues that provide the underlying rationale for these plans.

Reflections along these lines have led some to conclude that we arebound to come up empty-handed as long as we think of an agent’sidentification with her motives as a self-relation she is responsiblefor securing. For, as long as we take this approach, we appear to bestuck with the question: under what conditions does the agent governher identification with some motive? what conditions must she satisfyin order to identify with the motives that move her to identify withsome of her motives and not others? under what conditions does sheauthorize the attitudes and/or mental activities that issue in a givenlower-order authorization? If we are to escape the regress suchquestions evoke, it seems that there must be an attitude that can beidentified with the agent’s point of view simply by virtue of being theattitude it is; there must be an attitude from which no agent canpossibly be alienated. To be sure, if—like most animals—rational agents could not distance themselves from their own motives,then they would be incapable of governing themselves. Self-governmentrequires two points of view: that of the governing authority, and thatof the governed. Nonetheless, if there is to be an end to the potentialregress of identifications, it seems that there must also be a limit tothe capacity for self-alienation.

As we have seen, no such limitation seems to apply where the mentalstate at stake is an agent’s highest-order desire, evaluativejudgment, or plan, or even an integrated combination of suchattitudes. The only attitude from which it seems that no agent can bealienated is the desire to have sufficient power to determine one’sown motives—the desire to be a self-governing agent.^[15] Even if, however, we leave to one side thequestion of whether this desire can really be attributed to everypotentially self-governing agent, it does not seem to be an adequatebasis for distinguishing motives whose power can be attributed to theagent herself from motives that are not in this sense internal. For ifa desire underliesevery action performed by a potentiallyself-governing agent, then it plays a causal role even when an agentfails to govern her motives in the minimal way necessary to beaccountable for them. It thus cannot be the key to any account of whatis special about self-governing agency^[16].

Perhaps there is no attitude to which we can point in order todistinguish between cases in which the power of an agent’s motives canbe directly attributed toher and cases in which her authorityover her motives is a mere formality. If so, then this might seem to bea reason to favor accounts that tie autonomous agency to the agent’sresponsiveness to reasons. Unfortunately, however, these accounts haveproblems of their own. Most importantly, it seems as though a personcan govern herself even if she does not understand the significance ofwhat she is doing. To be sure, if someone’s ignorance is perfectlyreasonable, then she may not be to blame if she does something wrong.But under such circumstances, what frees her from blame is the factthat she has good reason to be ignorant. There appears to be no basisfor assuming that, in addition to lacking certain relevant information,she is not really the (ill-informed) power behind her authorization ofher action.

In killing Desdemona, Othello fails to accomplish his aim of doingwhat he has good reason to do. But this does not prevent him frombeing the author of his own actions. Nor would he necessarily havebeen prevented from governing himself if, given his character andcircumstances, he had beenunable to “track” theevaluative and nonevaluative facts: he would still have beenaccountable for what he did if his reason for doing it had been thathe was too jealous, or too stubborn, or too vain, or too hot-temperedto be capable of responding to the wide range of reasons againstbelieving that his wife was unfaithful to him—and the widerange of reasons against killing her even if she was unfaithful.^[17] More carefully, toinsist that he wouldnot have been accountable under thesecircumstances, we must abandon the assumption that autonomous agency ispossible even if all actions can, in principle, be explained in termsof deterministic laws of nature. In other words, we must accept theincompatibilist thesis that if a person’s character is the product offorces over which he never had any control, and if his character traitsdetermine his choices, theneven if his motives are responsive toreasons, he is not responsible for their motivating force.

The preceding reflections call attention to how difficult it is todistinguish the conditions ofideal self-government from theconditions under which one is sufficiently self-governing to beresponsible for the motivating power of one’s desires. The difficultyis manifested in the fact that as soon as we try to pin down theminimal, threshold conditions ofautonomous agency, we seem tocome up against the conditions necessary foragencyitself.

Consider, for example, an alleged paradigm case of an agent who failsto govern herself: a person who takes drugs even though she wouldrather resist the motivating force of her addiction. It is widelyagreed that, even if many people who fit this description are merelyweak-willed, not all of them are: some unwilling addicts are notself-governing in even the minimal sense. According to coherentist andresponsiveness-to-reasoning accounts, this is because such addictsare, in effect, “passive bystanders” to their ownmotives. But even if we could find a satisfactory account of therelevant passivity, this diagnosis would be problematic. For itassimilates the addict to someone whose behavior does not even qualifyas anaction—someone, e.g., with Tourette’s Syndrome,whose verbal outbursts and bodily movements are notevenvoluntary. It thus fails to shed light on the conditionsunder which someone acts—intentionally, even deliberately—without being accountable for what she does. (The same problemarises for the proposal that autonomous agents differ from otheragents in virtue of their special way of understanding what they areup to. Regardless of whether someone governs her intentional actions,she knows what she is doing without having to observe her behavior.If someone had to observe her own behavior in order to discover whatshe was up to, then this behavior would not qualify as her action.)

If someone’s motives directly defy her attempt to exercise authorityover her actions, then their power is not only independent of herauthority; they bypass her agency altogether. Even if under theseconditions a person can acknowledge that there is something to be saidfor behaving as she does, she is as alienated from the power of her ownmotives as she is from the power of the physiological states thatproduce her reflex movements. She is not an autonomous agent becauseshe is not an agent at all^[18].

Of course, there is a sense in which the addict, but not the victimof Tourette’s, is responsive to reasons. But even if we could spell outthis distinction in a satisfactory way, we still face the problem ofexplaining why an agent’s capacity to respond to external reality isrelevant to her capacity to govern herself. And there are otherproblems too. If, for example, nonaction differs from action in virtueof being unresponsive to reasons, then it follows that nonrationalanimals never really act, or that acting from instinct is acting forreasons. It is not clear what considerations could overcome theimplausibility of these implications.

4. Agents as Causes and the Practical Point of View

Evennonautonomous rational agents authorize the motivatingpower of the desires that move them to act. Yet there is an importantsense in which the power behind their authorizations is not their own.What does the relevant impotence amount to? The incompatibilist, wesaw, has a ready answer: an agent is prevented from exercising anypower over her behavior when her authorization of this behavior can betraced to the determining influence of external powers. According tothe incompatibilist, if the unwilling addict fails to govern herself,this is because her motives are determined by past states of affairover which she does not have (and never did have) any control. And if awilling addict’s motives have a similar genesis, then she,too, is not accountable for their motivating power.

The familiar problem with this answer is that there seems to be no wayfor an agent to gain an extra measure of control over her motivessimply by acquiring attitudes or judgments or other mental states thatare not determined by anything else. If someone’s attitude toward hermotives is not determined by any earlier state of affairs, then howcan it be determined byher? This question pushes some withincompatibilist intuitions to attribute a special causal power toagents—a power of agency, which is not reducible to the effectone event has on another. On this view, a person can“agent-cause” a certain response to earlier events in away that is not itself the effect of these earlier events. (Chisholm,Clarke, O’Connor, Taylor, R.) She can bring it about that she ismotivated in a certain way, without anything determining her to do so.Thus, her power over her actions cannot be reduced to the power ofexternal motivating forces.^[19]

Such accounts of autonomous agency take seriously the need todistinguish an agent’s power from the power of the psychic forces thatpush and pull her. Yet the obscurities of the special sort of causationthey evoke are enough to prevent most philosophers from embracing thisconception of autonomous agency. To mention just a few familiarchallenges: If agent-causing an event does not involve doing somethingto bring it about that the event occurs, then how does the agent exerther causal power? and why does this power produce its effects at onetime rather than another? If, on the other hand, an agent must dosomething in order to agent-cause an action, then doesn’t this requirethat she undergo some change? and isn’t this change of state itself anevent?

On the basis of these and other difficulties, many conclude that theappeal to agent-causation provides no more insight into autonomy thanthe simple assertion that we can sometimes govern the causal efficacyof our own motives. Incompatibilists who are sympathetic with thiscomplaint nonetheless insist that even if an agent’s causal power mustbe understood in terms of the causal relations among events, autonomousagency is possible only if the conditions that immediately give rise toan agent’s intention need not suffice to produce it. If, they argue, anagent cannot authorize a given action without being determined to do soby powers beyond her control, then autonomous agency is an illusion. Ifour every action is an event in a deterministic causal chain, then weauthorize our actions only in the sense that a figurehead authorizesthe decisions she is forced to sign. Indeed, unlike a political puppet,we do not even have the option of defiance^[20].

Others see things differently, however. They argue that theincompatibilist’s conclusion reflects a misunderstanding of the verynature of rational agency. In making their case, they take their leadfrom the philosopher who has contributed more than any other to ourunderstanding of autonomy. Kant, they note, stresses the deepdifferences between the two points of view from which we can thinkabout ourselves and our world.^[21] We take up thetheoretical point of view in order to gain knowledge about thenature of reality, and on this basis make predictions about whicheffects will follow from which causes. When we want to make up ourminds about what to do, however, we take up thepracticalpoint of view. From this point of view, too, we survey the facts thatare relevant to our decisions. But since none of these facts, takensingly or together, is intrinsically action-guiding, they cannot freeus from the task of drawing our own conclusions about what we havereason to do. (Korsgaard, Bok)

This is true, the neo-Kantians point out, even if our decisions arethe effect of causal powers over which we have no control. Since nofacts of which we could possibly become aware can force us to attributeany particular significance to them, and since in order to decide whatto do, we must attribute some significance to the facts of which we areaware (even if this involves taking them to have no significance atall), our decisions are “up to us.” According to those who press thisline of argument, our authority over our own actions would not beillusory even if our mode of exercising it were causally determined byevents or states of affairs over which we have no control. Even underthese circumstances, no events or states of affairs would have thepower to determine what we havereason to do. So even underthese circumstances, we have to reachour own conclusions on this pointand acting accordingly. (Note that since this argument relies on theconnection between determining what we have reason to do anddetermining what wewill do, it can also be endorsed by thosewho take acting for reasons to involve responding to theoreticalreasons. Indeed, there is a loose sense in which an agent’s point ofview is “practical” as long as the truth of her predictionsdepends on the fact that she makes them.)

5. Conclusion

These last observations take us back to where we started. Thepolitical demand to be permitted to govern ourselves is grounded in themetaphysics of agency: any agent who faces the task of “making upher mind” has the authority to determine how she will act. Onmost occasions, what an agent does is the direct effect of her exerciseof this authority. Yet there is also ample evidence that the capacityfor self-government is vulnerable to any number of assaults; an agent’sauthority over her actions is no guarantee that she has the power todetermine how she exercises this authority. Agents can be deprived oftheir autonomy by brainwashing, depression, anxiety, fatigue; they cansuccumb to compulsions and addictions. To what, exactly, are we callingattention when we say that, under these conditions, an agent does notgovern herself, even if she acts as she does because she thinks she hassufficient reason to do so, even if she has (thoroughly) considered thepros and cons of her options, and has endorsed her behavior on thisbasis, and even if she would have acted differently if there had beenstronger reason to do so? Most agents who are capable of asking thisquestion are confident that they are the authors of most of theiractions, and are thus accountable for most of what they do. Nonetheless, asthis brief survey indicates, the self-relation they thereby attributeto themselves is extremely difficult to pin down.^[22]

Bibliography

Albritton, R., 1985, “Freedom of Will and Freedom ofAction,”Proceedings and Addresses of the AmericanPhilosophical Association, 59(2): 239–251.
Allison, H., 1990,Kant’s Theory of Freedom, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, J., 2003, “Autonomy and the Authority of PersonalCommitments: From Internal Coherence to Social Normativity,”Philosophical Explorations, 6(2): 90–108.
–––, 2008, “Disputing Autonomy:Second-Order Desires and the Dynamics of Ascribing Autonomy,”Sats: The Nordic Journal of Philosophy, 9(1): 1–26.
Anderson, J. and Honneth, A., 2005, “Autonomy,Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice,” in Christman andAnderson, 127–49.
Anderson, J. and Lux, W., 2004, “Knowing Your Own Strength:Accurate Self-Assessment as a Requirement for PersonalAutonomy,”Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology,11(14): 279–94.
Anscombe, G. E., 1985,Intention, 2nd ed., Ithaca, NewYork: Cornell University Press.
Aristotle, 1999,Nicomachean Ethics, I and VII, T. Irwin(trans.), 2nd ed., Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Arpaly, N., 2004, “Which Autonomy?” in J. Campbell,M. O’Rourke, and D. Shier (eds.),Freedom andDeterminism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 173–88.
–––, 2006,Merit, Meaning, and HumanBondage: An Essay on Free Will, Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.
Arpaly, N. and Schroeder, T., 1999, “Praise, Blame, and theWhole Self,”Philosophical Studies, 93: 161–88.
–––, 2013,In Praise of Desire, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Audi, R., 1993,Action, Intention, and Reason, Ithaca:Cornell University Press.
Ayer, A.J., 1954, “Freedom and Necessity,” inPhilosophical Essays, New York: St. Martin’s Press,3–20.
–––, 1980, “Free-Will andRationality,” in Zak van Straaten (ed.),PhilosophicalSubjects: Essays Presented to P.F. Strawson, Oxford: Clarendon,1–13.
Benn, S. , 1988,A Theory of Freedom, New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Bennett, J, 1980, “Accountability,” inPhilosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P.F. Strawson,van Straaten, Z. (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 14–47.
Benson, J., 1983, “Who is the AutonomousMan?”Philosophy, 58: 5–17.
Benson, P., 1994, “Free Agency and Self-worth,”Journal of Philosophy, 91: 650–68.
–––, 2000, “Feeling Crazy: Self-worth andthe Social Character of Responsibility,” in Mackenzie andStoljar, 72–93.
–––, 2005, “Taking Ownership: Authorityand Voice in Autonomous Agency,” in Christman and Anderson.
Berlin, I.,1969,Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
Berofsky, B. (ed.), 1966,Free Will and Determinism, NewYork: Harper and Row.
–––, 1983, “Autonomy,” inHowMany Questions? Essays in Honor of Sidney Morgenbesser,L. Cauman, I. Levi, C. Parsons, and R. Schwartz (eds.),Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 301–19.
–––, 1987,Freedom from Necessity: TheMetaphysical Basis of Responsibility, New York: Routledge andKegan Paul.
–––, 1992, “On the Absolute Freedom of theWill,”American Philosophical Quarterly, 29:279–89.
–––, 1995,Liberation from Self: A Theory ofPersonal Autonomy, New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
–––, 2003, “Identification, the Self, andAutonomy,”Social Philosophy and Policy, 20(2):199–220.
–––, 2005, “Autonomy Without FreeWill,” in Taylor 2005, 58–86.
Bishop, J., 1989,Natural Agency: An Essay on the CausalTheory of Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bittner, R, “Autonomy, and Then,”PhilosophicalExplanations, 5(3): 217–28.
Bok, H., 1998,Freedom and Responsibility, Princeton:Princeton University Press.
Bonjour, L. 1976, “Determinism, Libertarianism, andAgent-causation,”Southern Journal of Philosophy, 14:145–56.
Brand, M. and Walton, D. (eds.), 1976,Action Theory,Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Bratman, M., 1979, “Practical Reasoning and Weakness of theWill,”Noûs, 13: 131–51.
–––, 1987,Intention, Plans, and PracticalReason, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
–––, 1996, “Identification, Decision, andTreating as a Reason,”Philosophical Topics, 24:1–18.
–––, 1999,Faces of Intention: SelectedEssays on Intention and Agency, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
–––, 2002, “Hierarchy, Circularity, andDouble Reduction,” in Buss and Overton, 65–85.
–––, 2003a, “A Desire of One’s Own,”Journal of Philosophy, 100(5): 221–42.
–––, 2003b, “Autonomy and Hierarchy,”Social Philosophy and Policy, 20(2): 156–76.
–––, 2004, “Three Theories ofSelf-Governance,”Philosophical Topics, 32:21–46.
–––, 2005, “Planning Agency, AutonomousAgency,” in J. Taylor 2005, 33–57.
–––, 2007,Structures of Agency:Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2013, “The Fecundity of PlanningAgency,” inOxford Studies in Agency andResponsibility, 1(1): 47–69.
Buss, S., 1994, “Autonomy Reconsidered,”MidwestStudies in Philosophy, 9: 95–121.
–––, 1997, “Weakness of Will,”Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 78(1): 13–44.
–––, 2012, “Autonomous Agency:Self-determination in the Passive Mode,”Ethics, 122(4): 647–91.
–––, 2013, “The Possibility of Action asthe Impossibility of Certain forms of Self–alienation,” inOxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, 1(1):12–48.
Buss, S. and H. Overton (eds.), 2002,Contours of Agency:Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt, Cambridge, Mass.: MITPress.
Chisholm, R., 1966, “Freedom and Action,” in Lehrer1966, 11–44.
–––, 1971, “Reflections on HumanAgency,”Idealistic Studies, 1: 36–46.
–––, 1976a,Person and Object, LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Press.
–––, 1976b, “The Agent as Cause,” inAction Theory, M. Brand and D. Walton (eds.), Dordrecht: D.Reidel Publishing Co.
–––, 1982a, “Replies,” inRoderick M. Chisholm, R.J. Bogdan (ed.), Dordrecht: D. ReidelPublishing Co., 1–16.
–––, 1982b, “Human Freedom and theSelf,” in Watson, 24–45.
–––, 1995, “Agents, Causes, and Events:The Problem of Free Will,” in O’Connor 1995a, 95–100.
Christman, J., 1988, “Constructing the Inner Citadel: RecentWork on the Concept of Autonomy,”Ethics, 99:109–124.
––– (ed.), 1989,The Inner Citadel: Essayson Individual Autonomy, New York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 1991, “Autonomy and PersonalHistory,”Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 21:1–24.
–––, 1993, “Defending Historical Autonomy:A Reply to Professor Mele,”Canadian Journal ofPhilosophy, 23: 281–90.
–––, 2004, “Relational Autonomy, LiberalIndividualism, and the Social Constitution of Selves,”Philosophical Studies, 117: 143–64.
Christman, J. and Anderson, J. (eds), 2005,Autonomy and theChallenges to Liberalism: New Essays, J. Christman andJ. Anderson, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Clarke, R., 1993, “Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account ofFree Will,”Noûs, 27: 191–203, reprinted inO’Connor 1995a, 201–15.
–––, 1996, “Agent-Causation andEvent-Causation in the Production of Free Action,”Philosophical Topics, 24: 19–48.
–––, 2003,Libertarian Accounts of FreeWill, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2008, “Incompatibilist(Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will,” inThe StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/incompatibilism-theories/>.
–––, 2014,Omissions, New York: OxfordUniversity Press.
Clarke, R., McKenna, M., and Smith, A. (eds.), 2015, TheNature of Moral Responsibility, New York: Oxford UniversityPress.
Clarke, R. and Reed, T., 2015, “Free Will and AgentialPowers,” inOxford Studies in Agency andResponsibility, 3(1): 6–33.
Copp, D., 2005, “The Normativity of Self-GroundedReason,”Social Philosophy and Policy, 22 (2):165–203.
Cuypers, S., 2006, “The Trouble with ExternalistCompatibilist Autonomy,” inPhilosophical Studies, 129(2): 171–196.
Darwall, S., 2006, “The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy ofthe Will,”Ethics: An International Journal of Social,Political, and Legal Philosophy, 116(2): 263–84.
Davidson, D., 1980,Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford:Clarendon Press.
–––, 1963, “Actions, Reason, andCauses,”Journal of Philosophy, 60: 685–700.
Deligiorgi, K., 2012,The Scope of Autonomy: Kant and theMorality of Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D., 1978, “On Giving Libertarians What They SayThey Want,” inBrainstorms, Cambridge, Mass.: BranfordBooks, reprinted in O’Connor 1995a, 43–56.
–––, 1984,Elbow Room: The Varieties of FreeWill Worth Wanting, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Doris, J., Knobe, J., & Woolfolk, R., 2007, “Variantismabout Responsibility,”Philosophical Perspectives, 21,Philosophy of Mind: 183–214.
Doris, J., 2015,Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance,and Agency, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Double, R., 1991,The Non-Reality of Free Will, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Dworkin, G., 1970, “Acting Freely,”Noûs, 4: 367–83.
–––, 1976, “Autonomy and BehaviorControl,”Hastings Center Report, 6: 23–28.
–––, 1988,The Theory and Practice ofAutonomy, New York: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1989, “The Concept ofAutonomy,” in Christman 1989, 54–62.
Dworkin, R., 1994,Life’s Dominion, New York: RandomHouse, Inc.
Ekstrom, L., 1993, “A Coherence Theory of Autonomy,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53:599–616.
Feinberg, J., 1970a, “Causing Voluntary Actions,” inJ. Feinberg,Doing and Deserving, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 152–86.
–––, 1970b, “What Is So Special aboutMental Illness?” in J. Feinberg,Doing and Deserving,Princeton: Princeton University Press, 272–92.
–––, 1989, “Autonomy,” in Christman1989, 27–53.
Fischer, J., 1982, “Responsibility and Control,”Journal of Philosophy, 79: 24–40, reprinted in Fischer1986, 174–90.
––– (ed.), 1986,Moral Responsibility,Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
–––, 1987, “Responsiveness and MoralResponsibility,” in Schoeman, 88–106.
–––, 1994,The Metaphysics of Free Will: AnEssay on Control, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1999, “Recent Work on MoralResponsibility,”Ethics, 110: 93–139
–––, 2002, “Frankfurt-StyleCompatibilism,” in Buss and Overton 2002, 1–26.
–––, 2006,My Way: Essays on MoralResponsibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2012, “Responsibility and Autonomy:The Problem of Mission Creep,”Philosophical Issues,22(1): 165–84.
–––, 2015, “Responsibility and the ActualSequence,”Oxford Studies in Agency and MoralResponsibility, 3(1): 120–135.
–––, 2017, “Responsibility, Autonomy, andthe Zygote Argument,”Journal of Ethics, 21: 223–237.
Fischer, J. and Ravizza,M., 1993,Perspectives on MoralResponsibility, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
–––, 1998,Responsibility and Control: ATheory of Moral Responsibility, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
Fischer, J., Kane, R., Pereboom, D., and Vargas, M., 2007,Four Views on Free Will, Malden, MA: BlackwellPublishers.
Foot, Philippa, 1957, “Free Will as InvolvingDeterminism,”The Philosophical Review, 66:439–50, reprinted in Berofsky 1966, 95–108.
Frankfurt, H., 1988a,The Importance of What We CareAbout, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1988b, “Alternate Possibilities andMoral Responsibility,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 1–10.
–––, 1988c, “Freedom of the Will and theConcept of a Person,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 11–25
–––, 1988d, “Three Concepts of FreeAction: II,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 47–57.
–––, 1988e, “Identification andExternality,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 58–67.
–––, 1988f, “The Importance of What WeCare About,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 80–94.
–––, 1988g, “Identification andWholeheartedness,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 159–76.
–––, 1988h, “Rationality and theUnthinkable,” in Frankfurt 1988a, 177–90.
–––, 1999a,Necessity, Volition andLove, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1999b, “The Faintest Passion,”in Frankfurt 1999a, 95–107.
–––, 1999c, “Autonomy, Necessity, andLove,” in Frankfurt 1999a, 129–41.
–––, 1999d, “On Caring,” inFrankfurt 1999a, 155–80.
–––, 2002a, “Reply to John MartinFischer,” in Buss and Overton, 27–32.
–––, 2002b, “Reply to MichaelBratman,” in Buss and Overton, 86–90.
–––, 2002c, “Reply to J. DavidVelleman,” in Buss and Overton, 124–28.
–––, 2002d, “Reply to Gary Watson,”in Buss and Overton, 160–64.
–––, 2002e, “Reply to T.M. Scanlon,”in Buss and Overton, 184–88.
–––, 2002f, “Reply to RichardMoran,” in Buss and Overton, 218–25.
–––, 2002g, “Reply to JonathanLear,” in Buss and Overton, 293–97.
Friedman, M., 1986, “Autonomy and the Split-LevelSelf,”Southern Journal of Philosophy, 24:19–35.
–––, 1989, “Autonomy in SocialContext,” in C. Peden and J. Sterva (eds.),Freedom,Equality, and Social Change, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen,158–69.
–––, 2003,Autonomy, Gender, andPolitics, New York: Oxford University Press.
Gert, B. and Duggan,T., 1979, “Free Will as the Ability toWill,”Noûs, 13: 197–217, reprinted inFischer 1986, 205–24.
Ginet, C., 1996, “Might We Have No Choice?” in Lehrer1966, 87–104.
–––, 1962, “Can the Will beCaused?,”The Philosophical Review, 71:49–55.
–––, 1990,On Action, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Greenspan, P., 1978, “Behavior Control and Freedom ofAction,”Philosophical Review, 87: 225–40,reprinted in Fischer,Moral Responsibility,191–204.
–––, 1999, “Impulse and Self-reflection:Frankfurtian Responsibility versus Free Will,” inPhilosophical Topics, 3(4): 325–40.
Hampshire, S., 1965,Freedom of the Individual, New York:Harper and Row.
–––, 1983,Thought and Action, NotreDame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
Harris, J., 2008,Of Liberty and Necessity. The Free WillDebate in Eighteenth–Century British Philosophy, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Hill, T., 2013, “Kantian Autonomy and Contemporary Ideas ofAutonomy,” in O. Sensen (ed.),Kant on Moral Autonomy,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 13–21.
–––, 1989, “The Kantian Conception ofAutonomy,” in Christman, 91–108.
Hobart, R., 1934, “Free Will as Involving Determinism andInconceivable Without It,”Mind, 43: 1–27,reprinted in Berofsky 1966, 63–94.
Holton, R., 1999, “Intention and Weakness of Will,”Journal of Philosophy, 96: 241–62
Honderich, T. (ed.), 1973,Essays on Freedom of Action,London: Rutledge & Kegan Paul.
–––, 1988,The Consequences ofDeterminism, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Horgan, T., 2011, “The Phenomenology of Agency and Freedom:Lessons from Introspection and Lessons from Its Limits,”Humana Mente, 15: 77–97.
–––, 2015, “Injecting the Phenomenology ofAgency into the Free Will Debate,”Oxford Studies in Agencyand Responsibility, 3: 34–61.
Hornsby, J., 2004, “Agency and Actions,” inH. Steward and J. Hyman, eds., 2004,Agency and Action,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–23.
–––, 2004, “Agency and Alienation,”in de M. Caro and D. MacArthur (eds.),Naturalism inQuestion, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,173–87.
Hume, D., 1739/2000,A Treatise of Human Nature, Norton,D. and Norton, M. (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 1748/1999,An Enquiry Concerning HumanUnderstanding, T. Beauchamp (ed.), Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
–––, 1751/1975,An Enquiry Concerning thePrinciples of Morals, L. Selby-Bigge (ed.), 3rd. ed. (revised byR. Nidditch), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hyun, I., 2001, “Authentic Values and IndividualAutonomy,”Journal of Value Inquiry, 35(2):195–208.
Ismael, J., 2016,How Physics Makes Us Free, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Jaworska, A., 2007a, “Caring and Full Moral Standing,”Ethics 117(3): 460–97.
–––, 2007b, “Caring and Internality,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74(3):529–568.
–––, 2009, “Caring, Minimal Autonomy, andthe Limits of Liberalism,” in H. Lindemann M. Verkerk, andM. Walker (eds.),Naturalized Bioethics: Toward ResponsibleKnowing and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,80–105.
–––, 1999, “Respecting the Margins ofAgency: Alzheimer’s Patients and the Capacity to Value,”Philosophy and Public Affairs, 28(2): 105–38.
Kane, R., 1985,Free Will and Values, Albany: StateUniversity of New York Press.
–––, 1996,The Significance of FreeWill, New York: Oxford University Press.
––– (ed.) 2002,The Oxford Handbook of FreeWill, New York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2007, “Libertarianism” and“Response to Fischer, Pereboom, and Vargas,” inJ. Fischer, R. Kane, D. Pereboom, M. Vargas,Four Views on FreeWill, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Kant, I., 1785,The Groundwork of the Metaphysics ofMorals, inPractical Philosophy, M. Gregor (ed. andtrans.), inThe Cambridge Edition of the Works of ImmanuelKant, P. Guyer and A. Wood (eds.), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996, 37–108.
–––, 1788,Critique of PracticalReason, inPractical Philosophy, Gregor, M. (ed. andtrans.), inThe Cambridge Edition of the Works of ImmanuelKant, P. Guyer and A. Wood (eds.), Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996, 133–272.
–––, 1793,Religion Within the Boundaries ofMere Reason, inReligion and Rational Theology,G. Giovanni and A. Wood, A. (ed. and trans.), inThe CambridgeEdition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, P. Guyer and A. Wood(eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 39–216.
Kenny, A., 1976,Freedom, Will, and Power, Oxford:Blackwell.
Killmister, S., 2017,Taking the Measure of Autonomy: AFour–Dimensional Theory of Self–governance, Abingdon:Routledge.
Knobe, J., 2003, “Intentional Action and Side Effects inOrdinary Language,”Analysis, 63: 190–93.
Knobe, J and Doris, J. , 2010, “Strawsonian Variations: FolkMorality and the Search for a Unified Theory,” inThe MoralPsychology Handbook, J. Doris (ed.), Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
Korsgaard, C., 1996a, “Morality as Freedom,” inCreating the Kingdom of Ends, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
–––, 1996b,The Sources of Normativity,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2008,The Constitution of Agency:Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology, New York: OxfordUniversity Press.
–––, 2009,Self-Constitution: Agency,Identity, and Integrity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
LeBar, M., 2005, “Eudaimonist Autonomy,”AmericanPhilosophical Quarterly, 42(3): 171–83.
Lehrer, K. (ed.), 1966,Freedom and Determinism, NewYork: Random House.
–––, 1997,Self-Trust, Oxford; OxfordUniversity Press.
–––, 2003, “Reason and Autonomy,”Social Philosophy and Policy, 20(2): 177–98.
Leiter, B., 2007, “Nietzsche’s Theory of the Will,”Philosopher’s Imprint, 7: 1–15.
Levy, N., 1981, “Autonomy and Addiction,”CanadianJournal of Philosophy, 36(3): 427–48.
Lewis, D., 1981, “Are We Free to Break the Laws?”Theoria, 47: 113–21.
–––, 1973, “Causation,”Journalof Philosophy, 70: 556–67.
–––, 1979, “Counterfactual Dependence andTime’s Arrow,”Noûs, 13: 455–76.
Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., and Pearl, D. K., 1983,“Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset ofcerebral activity (readiness-potential): The unconscious initiation ofa freely voluntary act,”Brain, 106: 623–642.
Libet, B.,Wright, E., Gleason, C., 1983, “Readiness potentialspreceding unrestricted spontaneous pre-planned voluntary acts,”Electroencephalographic and Clinical Neurophysiology, 54:322–325.
Libet, B., 1985, “Unconscious cerebral initiative and therole of conscious will in voluntary action,”Behavioral andBrain Sciences, 8: 529–566.
Lippert-Rasmussen, K , 2003, “Identification andResponsibility,”Ethical Theory and Moral Practice6(4): 349–76.
Locke, D., 1975, “Three Concepts of Free Action: I,”Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 49:95–112.
MacKay, D.M., 1960, “On the Logical Indeterminacy of a FreeChoice,”Mind, 69: 31–46.
–––, 1971, “Choice in a MechanisticUniverse: A Reply to Some Critics,”British Journal for thePhilosophy of Science, 22: 275–85.
–––, 1973, “The Logical Indeterminatenessof Human Choice,”British Journal for the Philosophy ofScience, 24: 405–408.
Mackenzie, C. and Stoljar, N. (eds.), 2000,RelationalAutonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the SocialSelf, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malcolm, N., 1968, “The Conceivability of Mechanism,”The Philosophical Review, 77: 45–72, reprinted inWatson 1982, 127–49.
McGreer, V. and Petit, P., 2015, “The Hard Problem ofResponsibility,”Oxford Studies in Agency andResponsibility, 3(1): 160–88.
McKenna, M., 2005, “Reasons Reactivity & IncompatibilistIntuitions,”Philosophical Explorations, 8(2):131–43.
–––, 2008, “A Hard-line Reply toPereboom’s Four-case Argument,”Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 77(1): 142–59.
–––, 2013, “Reasons-Responsiveness,Agents, and Mechanisms,” inOxford Studies in Agency andResponsibility, 1: 151–183.
–––, 2014, “Resisting the ManipulationArgument: A Hard-liner Takes it on the Chin,”Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 89: 467–84.
Mele, A., 1993, “History and Personal Autonomy,”Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 23: 271–80
–––, 1995,Autonomous Agents: FromSelf-Control to Autonomy, New York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2002, “Autonomy, Self-Control, andWeakness of Will,” in Kane, 529–548.
–––, 2004, “The Illusion of Conscious Willand the Causation of Intentional Actions,”PhilosophicalTopics, 32 (1/2): 193–213.
–––, 2009,Effective Intentions: The Powerof Conscious Will, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meyers, D., 1987, “Personal Autonomy and the Paradox ofFeminine Socialization,”Journal of Philosophy, 84:619–28.
–––, 1989,Self, Society, and PersonalChoice, New York: Columbia University Press.
Moran, R., 2001,Authority and Estrangement: An Essay onSelf-knowledge, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
–––, 2002, “Frankfurt on Identification:Ambiguities of Activity in Mental Life,” in Buss and Overton,189–217.
Morgenbesser, S. and Walsh, J.(eds.), 1962,Free Will,Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Nagel, T., 1986, “The Problem of Autonomy,”inTheView from Nowhere, New York: Oxford University Press,110–20, reprinted in O’Connor 1995a, 33–42.
Nahmias, E., Mooris, S., Nadelhoffer, T. and Turner, J., 2005,“Surveying Freedom: Four Intuitions about Free Will and MoralResponsibility,”Philosophical Psychology, 18:561–84.
Neely, W., 1974, “Freedom and Desire,”Philosophical Review, 83: 32–54.
Nelkin, D., 2007, “Do We Have a Coherent Set of Intuitionsabout Moral Responsibility?”Midwest Studies inPhilosophy 31: 243–59.
–––, 2011,Making Sense of Freedom andResponsibility, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nichols, S. and Knobe, J. , 2007, “Moral Responsibility andDeterminism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions,”Noûs, 41(4): 663–85.
Nozick, R., 1981,Philosophical Explanations, Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press.
O’Connor, T., 1993, “Indeterminism and Free Agency: ThreeRecent Views,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,53: 499–525.
––– (ed.), 1995a,Agents, Causes and Events:Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will, New York: OxfordUniversity Press.
–––, 1995b, “Agent Causation,” inO’Connor (ed.),Agents, Causes, and Events, New York:Oxford University Press, 173–200.
–––, 1996, “Why Agent Causation?”Philosophical Topics, 24: 143–51.
–––, 2000,Persons and Causes: TheMetaphysics of Free Will, New York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2000,Persons and Causes, NewYork: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2009, “Agent-Causal Power,” inDispositions and Causes, Toby Handfield (ed.), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 184–214.
–––, 2010, “Free Will,”TheStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), EdwardN. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/freewill/>.
Oshana, M. (ed.), 2015,Personal Autonomy and SocialOppression, Abingdon: Routledge.
Pereboom, D., 1995, “Determinism el Dente,”Nous, 29:21–45.
–––, 2001,Living Without Free Will,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2004, “Is Our Concept of AgentCausation Incoherent?,”Philosophical Topics, 32:275–86.
–––, 2006a, “Kant on TranscendentalFreedom,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 73:537–67.
–––, 2006b, “Reasons Responsiveness,Alternative Possibilities, and Manipulation Arguments AgainstCompatibilism: Reflections on John Martin Fischer’sMyWay,”Philosophical Books, 47: 198–212.
–––, 2008, “A Hard-line Reply to theMultiple-Case Manipulation Argument,”Philosophy andPhenomenological Research, 77(1): 160–70.
–––, 2009, “Hard Incompatibilism and ItsRivals,”Philosophical Studies, 144: 21–33.
–––, 2014,Free Will, Agency, and Meaning inLife, New York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2015, “The Phenomenology of Agencyand Deterministic Agent Causation,” inHorizons ofAuthenticity in Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Moral Psychology:Essays in Honor of Charles Guignon, Megan Altman and Hans Gruenig(eds.), New York: Springer, 2015, 277–94.
Pink, T., 2016,Self–determination, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
Plato, 1997,Protagoras, Lombardo,S. and Bell,K. (trans.), inPlato: Completed Works, J. Cooper (ed.) andD. Hutchinson (asst. ed.), Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company,746–790.
Radoilska, L. (ed.), 2012,Autonomy and Mental Disorder,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reath, A., 2006,Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory:Selected Essays, Oxford and New York: Oxford UniversityPress.
Reid, T., 1788/1969,Essays on the Active Powers of Man,Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Richardson, H., 2001, “Autonomy’s Many NormativePresuppositions,”American Philosophical Quarterly, 38:287–303.
Roughly, N., 2002, “The Uses of Hierarchy: Autonomy andValuing,”Philosophical Explanations, 5(3):167–85.
Rowe, W., 1987, “Two Concepts of Freedom,”TheProceedings and Addresses of the American PhilosophicalAssociation, 61: 43–64; reprinted in O’Connor 1995a,151–72.
–––, 1991, “Responsibility,Agent-Causation, and Freedom: An Eighteenth-Century View,”Ethics 101(2): 237–57, reprinted in Fischer and Ravizza(eds.),Perspectives on MoralResponsibility, 263–85.
Santiago, J., 2005, “Personal Autonomy: What’s Content Gotto Do with It?”Social Theory and Practice: An Internationaland Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Philosophy, 31(1):77–104.
Sartorio, C., 2015, “Sensitivity to Reasons and ActualSequences,” in David Shoemaker (ed.), 2015,Oxford Studiesin Agency and Responsibility, 3(1): 104–19.
–––, 2016,Causation and Free Will,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sartre, J.-P., 1956,Being and Nothingness, H. Barnes(trans.), New York: Simon & Schuster.
Scanlon, T., 2002, “Reasons and Passions,” in Buss andOverton.
Schatz, D., 1985, “Free Will and the Structure ofMotivation,” inMidwest Studies in Philosophy, 10:451–82.
Schoeman, F. (ed.), 1987,Responsibility, Character and theEmotions: New Essays in Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Schroeder, T., 2015, “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder andMoral Agency,”Oxford Studies in Agency andResponsibility, 3(1): 85–103.
Schroeter, F., 2004, “Endorsement and AutonomousAgency,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,69(3): 633–59.
Searle, J., 2003,Rationality in Action, Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press.
Sehon, S., 2016,Free Will and Action Explanation,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sher, G., 2006, “Out of Control,”Ethics116(2): 285–301.
Shoemaker, D., 2003, “Caring, Identification, andAgency,”Ethics, 114(1): 88–118.
–––, 2012, “Attributability,Answerability, and Accountability: Toward a Wider Theory of MoralResponsibility,”Ethics, 121(3): 602–32.
–––, 2013 (ed.),Oxford Studies in Agencyand Responsibility (Volume 1), Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
–––, 2015 (ed.),Oxford Studies in Agencyand Responsibility (Volume 3), Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
Slote, M., 1980, “Understanding Free Will,”Journal of Philosophy, 77: 136–51, reprinted in Fischer(ed.) 1986, 124–39.
–––, 1982, “Selective Necessity and theFree-Will Problem,”Journal of Philosophy, 79:5–24.
Smith, A., 2008, “Control, Responsibility, and MoralAssessment,”Philosophical Studies 138: 367–92.
–––, 2005, “Responsibility for Attitudes:Activity and Passivity in Mental Life,”Ethics 115(2):236–71.
–––, 2012, “Attributability,Answerability, and Accountability: In Defense of a UnifiedAccount,”Ethics, 122: 575–589.
Spinoza, B. de, 1985,Ethics, E. Curley, (trans.),Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sripada, C., 2015 “Moral Responsibility, Reasons, and theSelf,”Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility,3(1): 242–64.
Steward, H., 2012,A Metaphysics of Freedom, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Strawson, G., 1986,Freedom and Belief, Oxford: ClarendonPress.
–––, 1994, “The Impossibility of MoralResponsibility,”Philosophical Studies, 75:5–24.
Strawson, P.F., 1962, “Freedom and Resentment,”Proceedings of the British Academy, 48: 187–211.
–––, 1992, “Freedom and Necessity,”Chapter 10,Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction toMetaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stroud, S. and Tappolet, C. (eds.), 2003,Weakness of Will andPractical Irrationality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Stump, E., 1993,“Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, andFrankfurt’s Concept of Free Will,” in Fischer and Ravizza,211–236.
Taylor, C., 1982, “Responsibility for Self,” in Watson1982, 111–26.
–––, 1989,Sources of Self: The Making ofModern Identity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, J. (ed.), 2005,Personal Autonomy: New Essays onPersonal Autonomy and Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1979, “What’s Wrong with NegativeLiberty,” inThe Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of IsaiahBerlin, Alan Ryan (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press,175–93.
Taylor, R., 1966,Action and Purpose, Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
–––, 1982, “Agent and Patient,”Erkenntnis, 18: 111–26.
Thalberg, I., 1978, “Hierarchical Analyses of UnfreeAction,”Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 8:211–26.
Usher, M., 2006, “Control, Choice, and theConvergence/Divergence Dynamics: A Compatibilistic ProbabilisticTheory of Free Will,”Journal of Philosophy, 103(4),188–213.
Van Inwagen, P., 1982, “The Incompatibility of Free Will andDeterminism,” in Watson 1982, 46–58.
–––, 1983,An Essay on Free Will,Oxford: Clarendon Press.
–––, 2017,Thinking about Free Will,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Velleman, J. D., 1989a, “Epistemic Freedom,”Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 70: 73–97, reprintedin Velleman 2000, 32–55..
–––, 1989b,Practical Reflection,Princeton: Princeton University Press.
–––, 1992,“What Happens When SomeoneActs?,”Mind, 101: 461–81, reprinted in Velleman2000, 123–43.
–––, 2000,The Possibility of PracticalReason, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
–––, 2002,“Identification andIdentity,” in Buss and Overton, 91–123.
–––, 2005,Self to Self: SelectedEssays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Veltman, A. and Piper, M., 2014 (eds.),Autonomy, Oppression,and Gender, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wallace, R.J., 1994,Responsibility and the MoralSentiments, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Watson, G., 1975, “Free Agency,”Journal ofPhilosophy, 72: 205–20, reprinted in Watson 1982,96–110, and in Watson 2004, 13–32.
–––, 1977, “Skepticism about Weakness ofWill,”Philosophical Review, 85: 316–39.
––– (ed.), 1982,Free Will, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
–––, 1987, “Free Action and FreeWill,”Mind, 96: 147–72; reprinted in Watson2004, 161–96.
–––, 1993, “Responsibility and the Limitsof Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme,” in Fischer andRavizza 1993, 119–50, reprinted in Watson 2004,219–59.
–––, 1996, “Two Faces ofResponsibility,”Philosophical Topics, 24 (2):227–48, reprinted in Watson 2004, 260–87.
–––, 1999a, “Soft Libertarianism and HardCompatibilism,”Journal of Ethics, 3 (4): 351–65,reprinted in Watson 2004, 197–215
–––, 1999b, “Disordered Appetites,”inAddiction: Entries and Exits, J. Elster (ed.), New York:Russell Sage Publications, 3–28, reprinted in Watson 2004,59–87.
–––, 2002, “Volitional Necessities,”in Buss and Overton 2002, 129–59, reprinted in Watson 2004,88–122.
–––, 2003, (ed.),Free Will, 2nd Edn.,Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2004,Agency and Answerability:Selected Essays, New York: Oxford University Press.
Wegner, D., 2002,The Illusion of Conscious Will,Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Westlund, A., 2003, “Selflessness and Responsibility forSelf: Is Deference Compatible with Autonomy?”PhilosophicalReview, 112(4): 483–523.
Wiggins, D., “Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism,” inHonderich 1973, 31–62.
Williams, B., 1993,Shame and Necessity, Berkeley,California: University of California Press.
Wilson, G., 1989,The Intentionality of Human Action,Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wolf, S., 1980, “Asymmetrical Freedom,”Journal ofPhilosophy, 77: 151–66, reprinted in Fischer 1986,225–40.
–––, “The Importance of Free Will,”Mind, 90: 386–405, reprinted in Fischer and Ravizza1993, 101–18.
–––, 1987, “Sanity and the Metaphysics ofResponsibility,” in Schoeman, 46–62.
–––, 1990,Freedom within Reason, NewYork: Oxford University Press.
Yaffe, G., 2000,Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on FreeAgency, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
–––, 2004,Manifest Activity: Thomas Reid’sTheory of Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yeomans, C., 2015,The Expansion of Autonomy: Hegel’sPluralistic Philosophy of Action, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
Young, Robert, 1986,Personal Autonomy: Beyond Negative andPositive Liberty, London: Croom Helm Ltd.
Zimmerman, D., 2003, “That Was Then, This Is Now: Personal Historyvs. Psychological Structure in Compatibilist Theories of AutonomousAgency,”Noûs, 37(4): 638–71.

Academic Tools

How to cite this entry.
Preview the PDF version of this entry at theFriends of the SEP Society.
Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO).
Enhanced bibliography for this entryatPhilPapers, with links to its database.

Other Internet Resources

[Please contact the author with suggestions.]

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Sven Nyholm for prodding me to seeways in which I could improve the entry when I was revising it for the first time. During that revision, he also worked tirelessly to help me track down references and input all of the new material.

Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative.
The Encyclopedia Now Needs Your Support
Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia Free

Browse

About

Support SEP

Mirror Sites

View this site from another server:

USA (Main Site)Philosophy, Stanford University

Info about mirror sites

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Movatterモバイル変換