Autonomy2

The concept of autonomy opens up an existential space in the human being.  It is possible to lay down the law for oneself if an only if one can be both the regulator and the regulated person.  Two other key terms frequently employed by Plato have the same force: αὐτάρκεια, which means literally “self-rule” but more often indicates independence or self-sufficiency, and ἐγκράτεια, which means “self-control”. 

In the Republic, Socrates demonstrates that the soul is not one simple thing but is divided into parts; or how else is that someone can simultaneously want to do something and not want to do it?  For example, we may want to avoid looking at something horrible, say a pile of corpses dead from the plague, and yet something in us wants to look and so we feast our eyes in spite of ourselves. 

Evolutionary psychology recapitulates this line of thought with such theories as the modular theory of mind: the mind is composed of a number of distinct, problem-solving engines that involved in the context of persistent problems that confronted our ancestors.  Somewhat less daring is the concept of evolved psychological mechanisms.  These are mental schema that process information (clues and contexts) into behaviors or into information that can be used by other mechanisms.  For example, if I pick up something hot, I drop it.  If I get the signal that others around me are turning hostile, I grow fearful; in turn I may respond with aggression or retreat.  The simplest model presents mind as constant competition between evolved psychological mechanisms for control of behavior. 

This is no doubt true at some level and on some occasions, but it is obviously superficial.  The human mind is capable of generating a coherent self.  The self may be indeed composed of a wide number of mental and ultimately neural mechanisms; however, it exists to the degree that the whole can exercise command over the parts.  When I deliberate, I consciously manage the debate between the various wills that Flannery O’Connor speaks of in the quote in my previous post. 

I have long suspected that two of the most profound problems in modern philosophy‑the problem of consciousness and the problem of free will, are really the same problem.  Consciousness is free will; it is the human self as a causal agent in thought and behavior.  The problem for evolutionary thought is how to explain the emergence of this phenomenon in the history of life. 

Without going deeper into that problem, I think that Plato points the way forward.  In the Gorgias, Socrates argues that self-government means that the higher part of the soul rules the lower parts.  In the Republic, the philosopher is presented as the person in whom intelligence rules the passions which in turn rule the appetites.  Elsewhere, the Protagoras I think, he acknowledges that, for most people, the role of intelligence is played by the nomoi.  The nomoi are the collective written and unwritten moral rules that define a particular human community. 

It seems likely that the human capacity for self-government emerged from the necessity of keeping track of the number of other human minds in our first communities and the subsequent necessity of internalizing the rules that governed our interactions.  Individual and collective self-government made for a dynamic that drove human evolution.  If this turns out to be correct, Plato will not be surprised.  He always suspected that the key to everything intelligible is the idea of the good. 

Flannery O'Connor on Integrity and Freedom

I spent spring break this year in New Orleans and when I am in New Orleans I always find myself reading Flannery O’Connor.  I won’t bother to explain.  Anyway, since I have been thinking about autonomy, I was struck by the author’s note to the second of edition of her novel, Wise Blood.  Here is most of that note:

Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations.  That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think that it is a matter of no great consequence.  For them, Hazel Motes integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind.  For the author Hazel’s integrity lies in his not being able to.  Does one’s integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?  I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.  Freedom cannot be conceived simply.  It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen. 

For “an author congenitally innocent of theory”, O’Connor writes with astonishing clarity and penetration about the presuppositions underlying her fiction.  Integrity is a term often used loosely to mean a sense of moral rectitude, but its precise meaning indicates that one is in possession of one’s self.  It is the essential requirement for moral responsibility.  That integrity is more a matter of what one cannot do that what one can is an insight that goes back at least to Plato’s Gorgias.  Self-government, the virtue focused on in that dialogue, means that the self imposes limits the self.  For that to be possible, the self cannot be conceived simply; it must be sense as the integration of its various parts. 

Thus “free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.”  That extraordinarily powerful line encloses the peril of O’Connor’s century.  The greatest threat to human autonomy that the world has ever known came from those who insisted on a singularity of will (do we need to add the triumph of the singular will?).  Genuine freedom indeed means many wills in conflict whether in an assembly of persons or that assembly that constitutes a natural person. 

Her insistence on the element of mystery implies, I suggest, that the capacity for freedom is ultimately miraculous.  She may be right about that.  Belonging as I do to the tribe of philosophers, I am not entirely convinced.  But I do believe that this implication is vital for philosophy.  The philosopher may try to explain and hence demystify the human capacity for freedom of thought and action.  Unless he takes seriously the possibility that such freedom depends on the intervention of a creator God, his speculations degenerate into mere dogma. 

The Evolutionary Origins of Human Autonomy

I am working on a paper on autonomy.  Here are some preliminary reflections. 

This essay concerns the biological origins of human autonomy and thus involves the intersection of biology and political science.  My point of departure is the assumption that the two fields of inquiry are interdependent.  It is not possible to fully understand human autonomy, individual or collective, without understanding its biological origins.  Likewise, to recognize that genuine autonomy emerges from the evolutionary history of life on earth is to understand how metaphysically robust the phenomenon of life really is.  This approach avoids both reductionism and any hint of vitalism; it allows biology and the human things to reveal themselves for what they are in the context of the natural world as a whole. 

One thing that the Socratic philosophers understood better than their modern counterparts is that the possibility of science rests on the assumption that human intelligence (or Nous, as the Greeks called it) operates on the same principles by which nature is ordered; otherwise, nature is forever unintelligible.  Accordingly, I begin with a consideration of the intelligible meaning of the word autonomy. 

The philosopher Ernst Mayr famously argued that biology is an autonomous science.  He meant by that not that biology contradicts or is free from the principles of physics, but that biology has more principles than physics.  I take that as the first clue that autonomy emerges as a space between two realms of laws.  This turns out to reflect the history of the term. 

The term autonomy is a classical Greek word built on two important roots.  Auto means self, as in Socrates himself.  It is a very basic word that functions both as a pronoun (him or it) and as an adjective, as in autoagathos, which means “good in itself”. 

The second root word is nomos.  This word is usually translated as “law.”  Like a lot of Greek words, it is borrowed from an earlier use.  It originally meant an enclosed pasture.  A nomos was boundary imposed by human beings that confined the movement of herd animals but allowed them to move freely (according to their own natural laws) within that boundary.  It was adopted to indicate both explicit, codified law and the unwritten moral rules that bound the citizens together into a polis.  I am pretty sure that Nietzsche’s phrase “herd instinct” derives from this Greek root. 

Herodotus uses the term when he describes the history of the Medes.  When they threw off the rule of the Assyrians, they achieved autonomy.  They later lost it when they allowed a man known for his fair judgment to establish a tyranny over them. 

Herodotus 1.95 [2] Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχόντων τῆς ἄνω Ἀσίης ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα εἴκοσι καὶ πεντακόσια, πρῶτοι ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν Μῆδοι ἤρξαντο ἀπίστασθαι, καὶ κως οὗτοι περὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίης μαχεσάμενοι τοῖσι Ἀσσυρίοισι ἐγένοντο ἄνδρες ἀγαθοί, καὶ ἀπωσάμενοι τὴν δουλοσύνην ἐλευθερώθησαν. μετὰ δὲ τούτους καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἔθνεα ἐποίεε τὠυτὸ τοῖσι Μήδοισι.   96. [1] ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον, ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδα περιῆλθον.

The Assyrians ruled Upper Asia for five hundred and twenty years, and from them the Medes were the first who made revolt. These having fought for their freedom with the Assyrians proved themselves good men, and thus they pushed off the yoke of slavery from themselves and were set free; and after them the other nations also did the same as the Medes: and when all on the continent were thus independent, they returned again to despotic rule as follows:--

Thucydides uses the same term to indicate the self-government of Greek cities and Xenophon follows suit when he continues the history of the war between the Athenians and the Spartans. 

Xenophon also uses the term in his Republic of the Lacedaimonians to indicate the practice in most Greek cities of emancipating children when they become adults.  They are then allowed to be autonomous, which means that they are self-governed with respect to their own families. 

Xenophon, The Republic of the Lacedaimonians, 3.1  Ὅταν γε μὴν ἐκ παίδων εἰς τὸ μειρακιοῦσθαι ἐκβαίνωσι,  τηνικαῦτα οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι παύουσι μὲν ἀπὸ παιδαγωγῶν, παύουσι δὲ ἀπὸ διδασκάλων, ἄρχουσι δὲ οὐδένες ἔτι αὐτῶν, ἀλλ’ αὐτονόμους ἀφιᾶσιν·

When a boy ceases to be a child, and begins to be a lad, others release him from his moral tutor and his schoolmaster: he is then no longer under a ruler and is allowed to go his own way.

This does not mean, of course, that the young adult is free from the laws of his city; it does mean that he is in some sense free within the bounds of those laws. 

Autonomy then literally means “self-law”.  It indicated both individual and communal independence: a person or a political community that lived under its own laws.  A political community is free when it is free from the authority of other communities and lords.  A man enjoyed autonomy when he could act of his own free will. 

However, and more revealing, a poet enjoys autonomy when he exercises poetic license and an animal enjoys autonomy to the extent that it can range freely.  Poetic license frees the poet from some convention but it frees him to institute boundaries of his own.  Without boundaries, his poetry cannot have meaning, as all meaning binds.  An animal that ranges freely will nonetheless range within a boundary set by its nature.  It will not go where there is likely to be neither food nor mates nor comfort, but it will turn aside on its own and not for any fence. 

The idea of autonomy extends along three dimensions.  One opens up a space between the natural laws of animal instinct and the artificial boundaries imposed by human husbandry.  The second opens a space between some human community and a larger community seeks authority over it.  The third opens between the individual human being and some larger human community of which he or she is a member. 

Autonomy means liberty rather than freedom.  Freedom is freedom from.  It is simple release.  Liberty is self-government, which is to say, self-legislation.  The topic of this essay is the biological origin of that space within which autonomy is possible.  I will argue that this space opens up with the emergence of human beings as moral and political animals. 

We were social animals before we became human animals.  Social animals must learn to live together.  In a harem species, this is achieved by the dominion of an alpha male whose rule, while he rules, is unchallenged.  In our own species, like our chimpanzee cousins, the position of the dominant individual was never so secure.  Our ancestors evolved into self-legislating creatures.  We were able to internalize rules that allowed us to live within the group but that also allowed the group to resist the domination of would-be tyrants.  We needed to cooperate, as cooperation was the key to social power.  At the same time, cooperation opens up the possibility of cheating and exploitation.  These tensions open the space for human autonomy.