AUTONOMY IN PRACTICAL REASONING

Henry S. Richardson, Georgetown University (II-A)

What contribution does autonomy make to the possibility of normative objectivity? Christine Korsgaard and J. David Velleman have recently argued, in different ways, that autonomy stands as an end or good of uniquely unconditional status, and hence grounds normative objectivity by serving as the one unquestionably objective end. For Korsgaard, autonomy is the capacity crucial to our reflective personhood. As such, according to her argument, autonomy makes us the source of value and hence valuable. For Velleman, autonomy is conscious self-control, the distinctive, constitutive aim of "full-blooded" agents, without which one would merely be behaving. Against these accounts, I argue via cases and abstractly that we can see how agents might reasonably refuse to accept the value of autonomy under either of these interpretations; hence, they are not, after all, unquestionable goods. On the basis of this negative result, I build a positive account of the way autonomy contributes to objectivity by holding us open to whatever reasons may arise. Thus, I interpret autonomy as the capacity to follow arguments wherever they may lead. On the account that results, I show, there is no need to accept Korsgaard's view that we must find "a source" of value. The account of autonomous reflection that I offer also provides an alternative to Velleman's way of distinguishing between mere behavior and deliberate action. Autonomy, so understood, is critical to our unrestricted ability to reason, potentially objectively, about final ends.