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1. Frankfurt has modified his original account many times. Thus, forexample, he has responded to the sort of regress worries mentionedlater in the entry by appealing, first, to an agent’s “decisivecommitments,” and more recently, to her “satisfaction”with her motives -- an absence of “restlessness orresistance” in response to their motivating force. (Frankfurt1999b)

2. Whereas hierarchical accounts tend to reflectsympathies with Hume’s philosophy of mind, Watson explicitly allieshimself with Plato.

3. Caring, Jaworska explains, “combines various individual emotionsinto a complex structure, [synthesizing and organizing] disparateelements of one’s psychic life” (Jaworska 2009, 92). It is, shecontinues, a sufficient basis for being a “self” that iscapable of “autonomous self-governance.” She notes, however,that this is not enough to “express autonomy in particularchoices”(99).

4. Bernard Berofsky callsattention to the fact that there is support “across a broadspectrum” of theorizing in psychology and psychiatry for theidea that certain inner states undermine autonomy by creating“barriers to objectivity.” They do this, he explains, by“persisting in a way that removes them from experiential reviewand the influence of newly acquired information.” (Berofsky1995, p. 199) Though Fischer and Ravizza, Wolf, and Nelkin argue thatresponsiveness to reasons is necessary condition ofmoralresponsibility, in presenting and defending their views, theysuggest that unless an agent satisfies this condition, she does notreally govern herself. As Wolf puts it, they are interested in the“relation to one’s will which is necessary in order for one’sactions … to be ‘up to oneself’ in the way that isnecessary for responsibility.” (4) (Note that Wolf reserves theterm ‘autonomy’ for one particular conception of thisself-relation: the incompatibilist view that an agent’s control overher behavior must be “ultimate” — that “herwill must be determined by her self, and her self must not, in turn,be determined by anything external to itself” (10).) Accordingto Wolf, responsiveness to reasons is a necessary supplement to acoherentist condition: “a person’s status as a responsible agentrests not only on her ability to make her behavior conform to herdeepest values but also on her ability to form, assess, and revisethose values on the basis of a recognition and appreciation of… the True and the Good.” In stressing that an autonomousagent “must be in a position that allows her reasons to begoverned by what reasons there are… [i.e.,] by what is valuableand worthless” (117-118), Wolf evokes a tradition that goes backto Plato. But she rejects the Platonic conception of values as“things” that can be “apprehended by some specialfaculty” (123). Fischer and Ravizza likewise try to steer clearof controversial metaethical assumptions. “Regularreasons-receptivity” is, they argue, essential to having“guidance control” over one’s action. “It involves apattern of actual and hypothetical recognition of reasons (some ofwhich are moral reasons) that is understandable by some appropriateexternal observer. And the pattern must be at least minimally groundedin reality.” (90) (For more on the metaphysics of reasons, seenote 10.) Unlike Wolf, Fischer and Ravizza do not think that reasonsresponsiveness suffices for moral responsibility. They believe that inorder for an agent to “own” the reasons-responsivemechanism that produces his action, he must “takeresponsibility” for it. To do this, he must “see himselfas an agent” and “accept that he is a fair target of thereactive attitudes as a result of how he exercises this agency incertain contexts” (210-211). (For more on the relation betweenmoral responsibility and autonomy, see note 17.)

5. The appeal of the reasons-responsive approach may also reflect afailure to distinguish governingoneself from exercisingcontrol overone’s life. Whether one’s future circumstancesare likely to constrain the options one would like to have surelydepends on whether one’s present actions are responsive to the reasonsfor and against acting this way. Even if, however, one cannotexercise control over one’s destiny if one lacks control over how oneacts at any given time, exercising control over how one acts isperfectly compatible with making choices that leave one with verylimited options. (The conception of autonomous agency asacapacity for shaping one’slife as a wholefeatures prominently in discussions of applied ethics.)

6. On this view autonomy is “achieved when the individual subjectsthe norms with which he or she is confronted to critical evaluationand then proceeds to reach practical decisions by way of independentand rational reflection” (Young 1986). In other words, one’sconduct is autonomous only if one exercises “assortedintrospective, imaginative, reasoning, and volitional skills”(Meyers 1987). In refining and defending this conception, Mele arguesthat an autonomous agent must be capable of reflecting critically uponher desires, and of altering them in light of thisreflection. Similarly, Christman stresses the importance of theautonomous agent’s ability to reflect (in a “minimallyrational” way) on the process whereby she acquired a givendesire. He argues that someone acts autonomously when she is moved bya given desire only if she would not reject the desire if shereflected on its genesis.) Some such procedural requirement is oftengrafted onto coherentist accounts. Thus, in his early work, GeraldDworkin argues that someone who identifies with his motives lacksautonomy if this identification reflects the fact that he has“been influenced in decisive ways by others in such a fashionthat we are not prepared to think of it as his own choice”(Dworkin 1976, 25). (In later work, Dworkin suggests that anautonomous agent need not actually identify with her motives as longas she is capable of altering her preferences in light of heruncompelled reflection. (Dworkin 1988, 17))

7. As Dworkin puts it, what is necessary for autonomy is “someability both to alter one’s preferences and to make them effective inone’s actions” (Dworkin 1988).

8.In discussing this phenomenon, Frankfurt coins the term“volitional necessity.” He believes that the experience ofbeing incapable of willing to do otherwise is not only compatible withgoverning one’s own actions, but is the best indication of where onestands, and so is the surest symptom that one is the power behindone’s exercise of authority. See also note 15 and the associatedtext.

9. Note that it is possible to endorse this response while rejecting theassumption that reasoning is a mode of gaining access to anindependent order of reasons. Kant argues, for example, that ourcommitment to acting for reasons is a commitment to accepting certainprinciples of reasoning as constraints on what we have reason to do.On this account, whatever moves us to reason in a way that violatesthese principles prevents us from appreciating the reason-giving forceof certain facts. But on this account, we fail to govern ourselveswhen we fail to respond to these reasons only because responding tothese reasons just is responding to demands we impose onourselves. (One point of clarification is worth adding to this overlybrief summary: In order to avoid the implication that no one isaccountable for doing things she has good reasonnot to do,Kant appeals to the wrongdoer’s ungrounded choice to defy the laws ofher own reason. (See Kant 1793) Similar concerns push somereasons-responsive theorists closer to the incompatibilist positionmentioned later in the entry. Thus, for example, Wolf argues that noone is accountable for her failure to respond to reasons if her actionwas causally determined by conditions over which she had nocontrol. (Wolf 1980).)

10. Relational accounts generally focus less on the constituents ofautonomous agency than on the conditions under which it is possiblefor someone to be an autonomous agent. But some philosophers whoappeal to the importance of social relations argue that we cannotdistinguish the mental states that are internal to an agent’s point ofview from those that are external without appealing to her socialrelations (see, for example, Oshana); and some of these philosophersstress, in particular, the role that a shared understanding of what isimportant plays in determining whether the influence of a givenattitude or standing disposition is attributable to the agent herself(Anderson 2003).

11. Much of the debateover the relationship between causal determinism, on the one hand, andautonomy, free will, and moral responsibility, on the other, focuseson the modal argument that is at the heart of van Inwagen’s defense ofincompatibilism. According to this argument, no one is accountable forwhat she does if her action is causally determined by past conditionsover which she had no control. On Kane’s account, the desire to be anautonomous agent is the desire to have “the power to be theultimate producers of [one’s] own ends… the power to makechoices which can only and finally be explained in terms of [one’s]own [will] (i.e., character, motives, and efforts of will).”“No one,” he argues, “can have this power in adetermined world.” (254)

12. According to Velleman, intentions are a special sort ofbelief that the agent has the power to make true. “Ourexpectation of doing something embodies an invention rather than adiscovery. For we can simply adopt the expectation that we’re going todo any one of the things for which we have some antecedent motives,and this expectation will modify the balance of forces so as to makeitself true. We are thus in a position to make up our forthcomingbehavior. Making up what we will do is, in fact, our way of making upour minds to do it.” (24)Without endorsing Velleman’s suggestionthat reasons for action are ultimately explanatory reasons, Andersonand Lux also defend a knowledge criterion of autonomy. An agent, theyargue, is not “genuinely self-governing” if she does notunderstand “the extent to which [she] has the capacitiesrequired” to do what she intends to do. (Anderson and Lux)

13. Attempts to make sense of weakness of will go back to Plato andAristotle. For some more recent discussions, see Davidson 1980, Watson1977, Bratman 1979, Mele 1995, Buss 1997 and Stroud and Tappolet2003. (Recently, Richard Holton has pointed out that there is a familiarconception of weakness of will according to which it is not a failureto conform to one’s contemporaneous all-things-considered evaluativejudgment but a failure to follow through on an earlier resolution.(See Holton 1999))

14. The example is Frankfurt’s (Frankfurt 2002b). The mother, he says, maybe “glad to be putting her need for the relationship above whatis best by a measure that she now refuses to regard as decisive”(163). More generally, Frankfurt argues that “the fact thatsomething is important to someone is a circumstance that naturally hasits causes, but it may neither originate in, nor be at all supportedby, reasons. It may simply be a brute fact, which is not derived fromany assessment or appreciation whatever”(161). “Suppose,” Frankfurt elsewhere writes, “Iwere to conclude for some reason that it is not desirable for me toseek the well-being of my children. I suspect that I would continue tolove them and to care about their well-being anyhow. This discrepancybetween my judgment and my desire would not show that I had becomealienated from the desire.” (Frankfurt 2002, 223) For a thoroughdiscussion of Frankfurt’s position, see Watson 2002.

15. Velleman has expressedreservations about identifying the constitutive aim of rational agencywith the disposition to govern one’s own behavior. But ChristineKorsgaard has defended this Kantian idea. (See Korsgaard 2009.) For avery brief comment on the role that the commitment to being governedby reason plays in Kant’s own account, see note 10. Note the veryspecial sense in which, according to Kant, no rational agent candissociate herself from this commitment: she cannot do so withoutcontradicting herself.

16. This is not an entry on moral responsibility. As earlier referencesand the bibliography indicate, however, there is an intimateconnection between moral responsibility and the phenomenon underdiscussion here: the minimal conditions of self-governing actions --the conditions that distinguish these actions from everything else weintentionally do -- are the conditions an agent must satisfy inorder to be accountable for the motivating force of whateverpsychological states causally determine her intentions. This meansthat insofar as debates about the necessary conditions of moralresponsibility are not debates about the conditions under which amorally responsible agent is blameworthy or praiseworthy for what shedoes, they are central to the topic of this entry. If philosopherssuggest otherwise, this is because they are not talking about theminimal conditions under which agents qualify as“self-governing” (see Fischer 2012) and/or because they donot believe that there is any metaphysical condition on moralresponsibility. According to the second alternative, whether someoneis praiseworthy or blameworthy does not depend on whether she hasdetermined her own action in some special way. (For a highlyinfluential defense of this position, see Strawson, P.F. See also note 18.)

17. Note that tobe “accountable” is not necessarilyto satisfy the conditions that justify others inholding oneaccountable. As Gary Watson points out, holding someone accountablefor wrongdoing involves reacting adversely to this person; and thismeans that whether one is justified in holding someone accountabledepends on whether it is fair to react adversely to what she does.The answer to this question may depend on more than whether shegoverns her action. It may depend, for example, on whether she hasthe conceptual capacities we expect a moral agent to exercise. (SeeWatson 2004) Note further that some philosophers (most notablyP. F. Strawson) have argued that there is no important conception ofaccountability according to which the judgment that someone ispraiseworthy or blameworthy presupposes the further judgment that shehas determined her own action in some special way. This skepticismappears to be supported by the very concerns raised in this section:if we cannot spell out the special metaphysical condition that rendersagents accountable for their actions, then it is tempting to concludethat whether someone is accountable for her actions is not ametaphysical matter after all. (For an exploration of the Strawsonianapproach to moral responsibility, see Watson 1993. For a more recentattempt to develop a Strawsonian approach, see Wallace 1994. See alsoArpaly 2006.)

18. Buss 2012 responds tothe challenge identified here with an account that differs from thefour highlighted in this entry. On this account, whether the causalinfluences on an agent’s reasoning are attributable to the agentherself depends on whether they satisfy a normative condition: anagent is prevented from governing herself only if she forms herintention under the decisive influence of mental states that are atodds with her identity as a representative human being; and a mentalstate satisfies this condition if and only if its influence tends tobe at odds with the conditions under which human beings functionminimally well.

19. Thomas Reid is an early champion of this approach. For an attempt towork out a rigorous incompatibilist conception of autonomy that doesnot appeal to the notion of agent causation, see Kane 1996.

20. Some psychologists believe that the experimental evidence supportsthis hypothesis: the experience as of being in control of our actionsis, they claim, an illusion; by the time it seems to us that we areinitiating an action, the physiological events that suffice to causethis action have already occurred. (For the classic experiments, seeLibet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl 1983; Libet, Wright, and Gleason1983; and Libet 1985. For a more recent argument along these lines,see Wegner 2002.) This interpretation of the data can be challengedin various ways. (See, for example, Mele 2004, 2009) Perhaps moreimportantly, even if the experience as of governing one’s action wereillusory, the causal story of how we come to be mistaken would notaddress the conceptual issue addressed in this entry: what sort ofself-relation is necessary and sufficient for governingourselves?

21. See Kant 1785. As Bok explains,

When I act for reasons, the events that cause me to act as I do mightbe external to me, but the reasons that I regard as determining what Ido cannot be. For while, qua event, my acceptance of some reason foraction might or might not ultimately be caused by something outsidemyself, in regarding it as a reason for action I must regard it ashaving a justification that is independent of those causes. Thisjustification might at various points appeal to theoreticalclaims. But I cannot regard it, qua justification, as having beenproduced or foisted on me by any natural event. When I consider it asa justification, I consider not its causal origins but its rationalgrounds; and I accept or reject it on that basis. When I explain whatleads me to accept it, I will adduce not the causes that led me to doso, but the reasons that convinced me that it was sound. Because anyreasons I adduce must themselves be reasons I accept, this type ofexplanation will not ultimately lead me to adduce determining factorsthat I do not regard as my own. (206)

For essentially the same point in a less Kantian context, seeD.M. McKay 1960 and 1973, and Hampshire 1983. Like others, they pointout that the question “How will A act?” has no determinateanswer for A until she decides how to act. What is a simple fact fromthe perspective of a third-person observer is not a fact from theperspective of the agent herself. Similarly, David Velleman arguesthat the freedom that counts where autonomous agency is concerned isepistemic freedom with respect to one’s alternatives. (Velleman 2000)

This essential formal feature of the practical point of view is at thecenter of most existentialist conceptions of human agency. Thus, forexample, Jean-Paul Sartre claims that “[M]otives are only forconsciousness. And due to the very fact that the motive can arise onlyas appearance, it constitutes itself as ineffective. …[C]onsciousness is not subject to it because of the very fact thatconsciousness posits it; for consciousness has now the task ofconferring on the motive its meaning and its importance.” (Sartre1956, 71)

22. As note 17 indicates, this difficulty is closely related to thedifficulty of identifying necessary and sufficient conditions of moralresponsibility. Many philosophers have responded to the latter challenge byrejecting the assumption that our interest in moral responsibility isan interest in a single phenomenon. Since Watson 1996, there has beenconsiderable discussion of the relationship between (1) the claim thatan action is “attributable to” an agent; (2) the claim thatan agent is “answerable for” her action and (3) the claimthat an agent is “accountable for” her action. (See, forexample, Shoemaker 2012.) Many philosophers believe that the range ofanswers people give to survey questions also challenge the assumptionthat “moral responsibility” is “a unifiedconcept.” (See Doris, Knobe, & Woolfolk, Knobe and Doris. For asummary of, and response to, this interpretation of the surveyresults, see Nelkin 2007.) Disagreements on this point complicatedisagreements over particular accounts of moral responsibility.Though this entry does not address these disagreements, it does assumethat there is a special sense in which only autonomous actions can beattributed to those who perform them, and it assumes that agents whoseacts are attributable to them in this sense (and only such agents) areaccountable for what they do. (Note that it does not follow thatattributability is sufficient for punishing wrongdoing—oreven expressing negative attitudes to the one who does wrong. Otherconsiderations will be relevant to whether this sort of reaction isjustified.)