Procedural Account of Autonomy, Coherence Reasons Responsiveness

Is the coherentist notion of autonomy coherent?

I endeavour to establish a content-neutral account of autonomy articulating a structure whereby actions can be deemed autonomous, as substantive accounts positing constraints on autonomy derived from socially generated ideals, fail to account for the lack of consensus over values within our pluralistic society. In considering strict coherentism, the obvious problems arise that the account fails to deal with coercive aspects of the origins of our ‘core selves' desires, and provide no relation between the content of our attitudes and external reality. Strict coherentism is thus doubly internalist, holding irrelevant how we came to be and what we believe.

In order to respond to the problems which arise from such internalism, I will argue for a modified coherentist account, which provide us with a conception of autonomy as not merely coherence between agent's actions and core self, but requiring the preconditions that the agent is responsive to a reasoning process and responsive to external reasons themselves aided in this process through inter-subjective appraisal. These modifications allow us to determine under what conditions we decide another person is autonomous. By determining how an individual's decisions relate to external reality and their own long term interests we can judge their capacity for consent and accountability. All these factors are of course culturally and temporally contingent, as such any judgment of an agent being autonomous is going to be a contingent judgement, nonetheless this modified account allows us to establish a coherentist conception of autonomy which is in fact coherent.

Problem of autonomy:

Despite the special apparent inalienable nature of our authority over our actions it seems possible for us to fail to govern ourselves; Incompatibilists argue autonomy as 'self-governance' is illusory, as agents desires on which they act can always be traced to determining external influences. We could accept this incompatibilist conclusion that there is no autonomy and be done with it. But in the words of Sir Humphrey; that would be the beginning of the end, the thin end of the wedge. What I argue we should be seeking in an account of 'autonomy'; is sufficient grounds for allowing us to determine what we should do and who we hold capable of consent or moral accountability; even if this pragmatic conception of autonomy is necessarily contingent upon some coercive influences. Such an account must answer; what distinguishes autonomy undermining influences on our actions from influences that do not undermine our autonomy? How do certain influences on our behaviour prevent us from governing ourselves?

The springboard for coherentist accounts has been the hierarchical analyses of autonomy, recognising the importance of first-order

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