On one influential view, a person acts autonomously, doing what she genuinely values, if she acts on a desire that is her own, which is (on this account) a matter of it being appropriately ratified at a higher level. This view faces two problems. It doesn’t generalize, as it should, to an account of when a belief is an agent’s own and does not let one distinguish between desires (and beliefs) happening to be one’s own and their being the ones a person would need to have to be autonomous. The pap…
Read moreOn one influential view, a person acts autonomously, doing what she genuinely values, if she acts on a desire that is her own, which is (on this account) a matter of it being appropriately ratified at a higher level. This view faces two problems. It doesn’t generalize, as it should, to an account of when a belief is an agent’s own and does not let one distinguish between desires (and beliefs) happening to be one’s own and their being the ones a person would need to have to be autonomous. The paper develops an alternative unified account of what it is for desires and beliefs to be one’s one and argues that an account of acting autonomously should pay attention not to which desires and beliefs are one’s own but to whether they are ones the agent has reason to have and to act on.
