Authority, Autonomy and the Legitimate State

ABSTRACT R. P. Wolff has argued that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the distinguishing mark of every state, viz. supreme authority over all its citizens, and the primary obligation of rational beings, viz. to act autonomously by taking moral responsibility for all of their actions. Utilitarian and consent theories which seek to justify the state's claim to possess a monopoly of the rightful use of force are shown to fail and the concept of a 'legitimate state'to be morally incoherent. However, Wolff's version of individualist anarchism does not follow. Human beings are by no means equally rational or homogeneously autonomous. There are 'states'which have a contingent and variable right to enforce obedience over an indefinitely large number of their 'subjects', although not over those who are autonomous because rational in high degree.     

Autonomy,Filial Piety,and Parental Authority: A Two-Year Longitudinal Investigation

A 2-year longitudinal study was conducted to test 3 causal models about adolescent autonomy, filial piety, beliefs about parental authority, and obedience in terms of personal, prudential, and multifaceted issues. Four hundred and thirty-six students from 10 junior and senior high schools in Taiwan (boys, n = 223; senior high school, n = 211) participated in the study. Hypothesis 1 predicted that autonomy (individuating autonomy vs. relating autonomy) would positively correlate with beliefs about authority legitimacy and obligation to obey, but was not supported. Hypothesis 2 predicted that filial piety (authoritarian piety vs. reciprocal piety) would positively associate with authority beliefs, and was partially supported. Authoritarian piety showed the positive relation with authority beliefs. Hypothesis 3 predicted that beliefs about authority legitimacy and obligation to obey would positively associate with obedience, and was supported. Hypothesis 4 predicted that age might moderate the structure models across domains, but the results indicated that age did not moderate the structural model in the prudential and multifaceted domains. The overall findings of this study reveal that adolescent beliefs about authority serve as a mediator between authoritarian piety and obedience, suggesting that traditional piety still has an influence on parent–child interaction in today's society.     

Ignorance,Information and Autonomy

People have a powerful interest in geneticprivacy and its associated claim to ignorance,and some equally powerful desires to beshielded from disturbing information are oftenvoiced. We argue, however, that there is nosuch thing as a right to remain in ignorance,where a right is understood as an entitlementthat trumps competing claims. This doesnot of course mean that information must alwaysbe forced upon unwilling recipients, only thatthere is no prima facie entitlement to beprotected from true or honest information aboutoneself. Any claims to be shielded frominformation about the self must compete onequal terms with claims based in the rights andinterests of others. In balancing the weightand importance of rival considerations aboutgiving or withholding information, if rightsclaims have any place, rights are more likelyto be defensible on the side of honestcommunication of information rather than indefence of ignorance. The right to free speechand the right to decline to acceptresponsibility to take decisions for othersimposed by those others seem to us moreplausible candidates for fully fledged rightsin this field than any purported right toignorance. Finally, and most importantly, ifthe right to autonomy is invoked, a properunderstanding of the distinction between claimsto liberty and claims to autonomy show that theprinciple of autonomy, as it is understood incontemporary social ethics and English law,supports the giving rather than the withholdingof information in most circumstances.     

Autonomy and the Authority of Personal Commitments: From Internal Coherence to Social Normativity

Abstract

It has been argued – most prominently in Harry Frankfurt's recent work – that the normative authority of personal commitments derives not from their intrinsic worth but from the way in which one's will is invested in what one cares about. In this essay, I argue that even if this approach is construed broadly and supplemented in various ways, its intrasubjective character leaves it ill-prepared to explain the normative grip of commitments in cases of purported self-betrayal. As an alternative, I sketch a view that focuses on intersubjective constraints of intelligibility built into social practices and on the pragmatics of how those norms are contested in an ongoing fashion.     

Genetic Information,Rights, and Autonomy

Rights, autonomy, privacy, and confidentialityare concepts commonly used in discussionsconcerning genetic information. When theseconcepts are thought of as denoting absolutenorms and values which cannot be overriden byother considerations, conflicts among themnaturally occur.In this paper, these and related notions areexamined in terms of the duties and obligationsmedical professionals and their clients canhave regarding genetic knowledge. It issuggested that while the prevailing idea ofautonomy is unhelpful in the analysis of theseduties, and the ensuing rights, an alternativereading of personal self-determination canprovide a firmer basis for ethical guidelinesand policies in this field.     

青少年的自主期望、对父母权威的态度与亲子冲突和亲合

通过对704名城乡高一和高三年青少年的问卷调查,探讨了高中阶段青少年－父母关系、青少年的行为自主期望和对父母权威的态度的特点,以及青少年—父母关系与青少年的行为自主期望和对父母权威的态度之间的关系。结果显示,我国城乡青少年对父母权威的认同程度较高,而期望获得行为自主的年龄较晚;青少年的行为自主期望、对父母权威的态度与青少年—父母冲突与亲合在某些方面存在城乡、性别和年级差异;青少年对父母权威的认同程度越高,对与父母发生分歧的接受性越高,其与父母的关系越亲密;那些期望在较晚年龄获得行为自主的青少年,与父亲的冲突较多,但与母亲较亲密     

The Irreducibility of Iterated to Single Revision

After a number of decades of research into the dynamics of rational belief, the belief revision theory community remains split on the appropriate handling of sequences of changes in view, the issue of so-called iterated revision. It has long been suggested that the matter is at least partly settled by facts pertaining to the results of various single revisions of one’s initial state of belief. Recent work has pushed this thesis further, offering various strong principles that ultimately result in a wholesale reduction of iterated to one-shot revision. The present paper offers grounds to hold that these principles should be significantly weakened and that the reductionist thesis should ultimately be rejected. Furthermore, the considerations provided suggest a close connection between the logic of iterated belief change and the logic of evidential relevance.     

Frontier Kantianism: Autonomy and Authority in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Joseph Smith

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often seen as the early American prophet of autonomy. This essay suggests a perhaps surprising fellow traveler in this prophetic call: Joseph Smith. Smith opposed religious creeds for the same reason that Emerson denounced them, namely that creeds represent a threat to the autonomy of a person's beliefs. Smith and Emerson also forward similar defenses of individual autonomy in action. Furthermore, they encounter a shared problem: how can autonomy be possible in a society where other individuals hold some kind of authority? I propose that each thinker resolves this tension through an insight with a Kantian echo. A suitably qualified version of authority can sometimes count as an expression of, rather than hindrance to, autonomy. I describe the overlap in Emerson and Smith as a “frontier” version of Kantianism. They favor determining one's own beliefs and actions in a way that looks forward to an open future of possibility.     

The Emergence and Irreducibility of Scientific Knowledge： A Multi-Synergic-Holism

The world possesses a hierarchical structure and evolves through emergence. Its levels are the result of emergence, and possess unique properties and functions which their components and emergent bases do not. Each of these levels also possesses basic laws or rules which cannot be logically deduced from other levels, and evince downward causation. Therefore, there are non-linear causal networks among the levels of complex systems in which causal reductionism does not hold. The hierarchical structure is formed in accordance with the increasing organized complexity of the objects, so that different levels give birth to different disciplines, and different disciplines have their own theoretical autonomy and independence. Therefore, theories across different levels are essentially irreducible, and any apparent case of reduction may only be so in the sense of a partial reduction. Emergence-evolution-hierarchy ontology and multi-synergic holism is compatible with reductionism even as it transcends it.     

The Irreducibility of Personal Obligation

It is argued that claims about personal obligation (of the form “s ought to ϕ”) cannot be reduced to claims about impersonal obligation (of the form “it ought to be the case that p”). The most common attempts at such a reduction are shown to have unacceptable implications in cases involving a plurality of agents. It is then argued that similar problems will face any attempt to reduce personal obligation to impersonal obligation.     

Prime Filters, Normality and Irreducibility in Lattices

We recall some notions introduced and developed by António Aniceto Monteiro, and show how these notions have been used and generalised, thus establishing a direct and indirect influence of Monteiro??s work that extends to this day.     

五论以用户为中心的设计:从自动化到智能时代的自主化以及自动驾驶车

综述人因学在人-自动化交互、人-自主化(autonomy)交互以及人机组队(human-machine teaming)方面的研究,梳理了自动化与自主化的人因学特征和问题,通过建立一个自主化、自动化与人工干预三者之间关系的概念模型来表征自主化人因学的问题空间。总结了智能自主化技术所带来的新型人机合作关系,促使采用新的人因学研究和应用范式,重新评估现有的人因学理论、方法以及今后的研究。针对自主化技术的应用,分析当前自动驾驶车设计中的人因学问题。呼吁在自动驾驶车研发中要重视人因学问题,人因学要提供学科支持和完整的人因学解决方案。     

Welfare,Autonomy, and the Autonomy Fallacy

In this article, I subject the claim that autonomous choice is an intrinsic welfare benefit to critical scrutiny. My argument begins by discussing perhaps the most influential argument in favor of the intrinsic value of autonomy: the argument from deference. In response, I hold that this argument displays what I call the ‘Autonomy Fallacy’: the argument from deference has no power to support the intrinsic value of autonomy in comparison to the important evaluative significance of bare self‐direction (autonomous or not) or what I call ‘self‐direction tout court’. I defend the claim that the Autonomy Fallacy really is a fallacy, and show that my examination of the argument from deference has wider reverberations. Once we clearly distinguish between autonomy and self‐direction tout court, it becomes much less plausible to say that autonomy of itself is an intrinsic welfare benefit.     

The Anarchist's Myth: Autonomy,Children, and State Legitimacy

Philosophical anarchists have made their living criticizing theories of state legitimacy and the duty to obey the law. The most prominent theories of state legitimacy have been called into doubt by the anarchists' insistence that citizens' lack of consent to the state renders the whole justificatory enterprise futile. Autonomy requires consent, they argue, and justification must respect autonomy. In this essay, I want to call into question the weight of consent in protecting our capacity for autonomy. I argue that if we care about all of the preconditions for autonomy, then we have good reasons to leave the state of nature. This leaves the philosophical anarchist with a dilemma. If she truly cares about autonomy, then she must welcome the state. But if she wants to deny the legitimacy of the state because of the value of consent, then she needs to downplay the moral significance of autonomy in people's lives. If autonomy matters, the state does too. If it doesn't, then consent doesn't. The philosophical anarchist can't have it both ways.     

Counterfactuals, Autonomy and Downward Causation: Reply to Zhong

In recent papers, Lei Zhong argues that the autonomy solution to the causal exclusion problem is unavailable to anyone that endorses the counterfactual model of causation. The linchpin of his argument is that the counterfactual theory entails the downward causation principle, which conflicts with the autonomy solution. In this note I argue that the counterfactual theory does not entail the downward causation principle, so it is possible to advocate for the autonomy solution to the causal exclusion problem from within the counterfactual theory of causation.