nucleation

LIT-296: Personal Autonomy

1 min read

Properties5
StatusActive — read in full 2026-09-29 (NOTE-267); worth reading as a compact, opinionated map of *why* hierarchical (and every other) account of self-government falls short of minimal autonomy, especially the §3 regress and weakness-of-will arguments; it is **not** a substitute for Frankfurt 1971, whose apparatus (second-order volitions, wantons, persons, freedom of will vs. action) it never states, and it does not report Watson's objection to Frankfurt at all.
Version2
Tagsagency, metaphysics, ethics, self-governance
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-267 — Personal Autonomy
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-029 — A higher-order attitude cannot make a motive the agent's own by its order alone: any attitude specified without presupposing the agent's participation can itself be disowned, and any specified to include it presupposes what it was meant to explain, THEORY-040 — A condition on free agency stated only in present psychological structure is met by a manipulated agent, so the account must count that agent free or add a historical condition, and no historical condition in the record's readings is shown to escape, THEORY-1118 — McKenna and Coates argue, with Dryden and with Buss and Westlund, that a condition on free agency stated only in the agent's present psychological structure is met by an agent whose structure a manipulator installed, so a mesh account must count that agent free or add a historical condition; Frankfurt, read first-hand, takes the first option, THEORY-120 — A motive is the agent's own, and she acts of her own free will, when she identifies with it, and that is all the freedom moral responsibility requires: identification is the conformity of the effective desire to a decisive higher-order volition (1971), and later wholehearted acceptance with no conflict at any higher order

Graph View

Buss & Westlund (2002), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman, eds.); first published 28 May 2002 (Buss alone); substantive revisions 10 Jun 2013 (Buss alone) and 15 Feb 2018 (Buss & Westlund; the version read); archived as https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2026/entries/personal-autonomy/ — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-autonomy/

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-09-29 at the owner’s request, as one of the texts assembled to represent Harry Frankfurt’s account of higher-order volitions, whose 1971 statement is paywalled. published: is the first appearance (ADR-002).

It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-267 is the close reading of 2026-09-29, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as a compact, opinionated map of why hierarchical (and every other) account of self-government falls short of minimal autonomy, especially the §3 regress and weakness-of-will arguments; it is not a substitute for Frankfurt 1971, whose apparatus (second-order volitions, wantons, persons, freedom of will vs. action) it never states, and it does not report Watson’s objection to Frankfurt at all.

Backlinks