Idea Of Autonomy Research Articles

Oversanctification, Autonomy and Islam in Malaysia

This article demonstrates that, contrary to the common image of Islam in Malaysia as being predominantly liberal, a conservative and authoritarian Islam frequently prevails. State‐sanctioned interventions into the minutiae of people’s daily and moral lives often take place. Drawing particularly on Cornelius Castoriadis’s idea of autonomy and Roy Rappaport’s notion of oversanctification, the author argues that such interventions may have a number of negative effects, including putting at risk the wider basis on which State and religious authority rests.

‘Allowed to be There’: The Wider Family and Child Protection

In order to support children and young people where there are child protection concerns, it is important that the wider family is enlisted wherever possible. Most of the recent thinking on family relationships has been focused on the more specific issue of kinship care. Issues about working with grandparents and other family members when a child is not removed from his or her parents have received less attention. In order to gain a better understanding of this, the authors worked with a multidisciplinary group of professionals and then tested the emerging ideas on a group of grandparents and others who had experienced child protection intervention in their own family. The article then seeks to conceptualise the findings by drawing on ideas of autonomy within personal relationships which are common to several psychological models. It is hoped that the ideas from this practitioner-led enquiry will help those working with children who are at risk of harm, as well as more widely.

The Inherent Limitations on Human Freedom

The Inherent Limitations on Human Freedom James M. Jacobs (bio) That the essence of human nature is to be free is a common theme of many otherwise disparate philosophical traditions. From Augustine to Sartre, the fact of human freedom has been the point of departure for the consideration of humanity’s essence. If philosophers are correct about the centrality of freedom, then every action humans undertake ought to be characterized by freedom in some way. This fact is made intelligible in light of the Thomistic doctrine, agere sequitur esse, or action follows from being.1 Indeed, St. Thomas argues that the very purpose of a substance’s existence is the characteristic operations by which it manifests its actuality. As he puts it, “All things created would seem, in a way, to be purposeless, if they lacked an operation proper to them; since the purpose of everything is its operation. For the less perfect is always for the sake of the more perfect: and consequently as the matter is for the sake of the form, so the form which is the first act is for the sake of its operation, which is the second act; and thus operation is the end of the creature.”2 If this is true, then it follows that the very existence of freedom in human nature is justified by the performance of free acts, since the substantial act of existence is necessarily fulfilled only [End Page 107] in the second act, the characteristic operations or activities that substance undertakes. In this article, therefore, I analyze the manifestation of human freedom in terms of the various activities proper to humans. This enables us to better grasp the existential significance of human freedom, for it is in these activities that freedom is fully realized. I base my analysis on the thought of Aquinas; moreover, I use many neo-Thomistic philosophers who have reflected critically on the idea of freedom in response to the Kantian notion of autonomy that has led modernity to define freedom in a radically different (and ultimately nihilistic) way. A true notion of freedom must recognize limits imposed by nature that are not acknowledged by the idea of autonomy. In the fundamental, natural act of existing, human are essentially free; however, it is the “second acts,” the characteristic operations, that bring this freedom to perfection. These operations fall into three main categories: man thinks, man does, and man makes.3 That is, man acts to know the world, he acts to fulfill desires, and he acts to impose perfection on objects for use and enjoyment. These acts, though, aim to achieve different kinds of objects: knowledge aims at the true, doing pursues the good, and making aspires to beauty. If man is free, freedom must be evident in each of these characteristic activities. Yet given that the nature and object of these activities differ, the way in which freedom is manifested must differ accordingly. That is, since the object of thought is truth, we must be able to exercise freedom in such a way that it does not obstruct the pursuit of truth; since the object of doing is the good that we desire, we must exercise that freedom so as to not obscure what is truly good; and since the goal of making is to produce things of beauty, we must not believe that our freedom entails the ability to define beauty itself. In other words, because humans act to attain some transcendental property, the nature of that property conditions the way in which human freedom is exercised. But is this a coherent picture where freedom is simultaneously constricted? Is not the essence of freedom the lack of natural constraints? [End Page 108] On the contrary, the inherent limitations of freedom are not only not contradictory, but are necessary for freedom to achieve its goal. Since action follows from being, the act itself must manifest freedom in order to fulfill the potential of our nature. However, if the operations are to achieve the true, the good, or the beautiful, then there are limits to what the human agent can do in order to be considered free. Moreover, these constrictions on freedom will vary according...

INTENTION, AUTONOMY, AND BRAIN EVENTS

Informed consent is the practical expression of the doctrine of autonomy. But the very idea of autonomy and conscious free choice is undercut by the view that human beings react as their unconscious brain centres dictate, depending on factors that may or may not be under rational control and reflection. This worry is, however, based on a faulty model of human autonomy and consciousness and needs close neurophilosophical scrutiny. A critique of the ethics implied by the model takes us towards a 'care of the self' view of autonomy and the subject's attunement to the truth as the crux of reasoning rather than the inner mental/neural state views of autonomy and human choice on offer at present.

Philosophical Approach to the Idea of autonomy of education

Philosophical Approach to the Idea of autonomy of education

El concepto de autonomía

Las concepciones normativas basadas en la autonomía plantean un dilema. Literalmente, autonomía significa auto-legislación, lo cual implica que los destinatarios de una norma deciden, ellos mismos, hacer válida dicha norma. Pero si una norma es válida sólo porque sus destinatarios así lo deciden, cabría decir que no puede ser vinculante para ellos. La idea de autonomía como auto-legislación, por tanto, parece ser incoherente. Pues bien, en este trabajo esbozaré primero el problema de la idea de autonomía como auto-legislación; en segundo lugar propondré, como solución al dilema que suscita la autonomía, un modelo de argumentación o razonamiento autónomo en el que el juicio normativo se entiende como libre a la vez que exigido por argumentos normativos; y, por último, explicaré el significado de la validez objetiva y de la obligatoriedad (o carácter vinculante) de las normas dentro de este modelo.

Just Genes: The Ethics of Genetic Technologies

This book is a timely overview of topics relevant to emerging genetic technologies and the ways individuals and society may be confronted with the issues that arise. The author states in the introduction that “The central aim of this book is to explore what values, ethical principles, and assumptions underlie the many and varied policy questions that arise from determining how best to integrate genetic innovations into practice.” Further, she states that she hopes the book will “sharpen the reader's critical and analytic faculties to better evaluate ongoing issues.” Her stated desire is to create a better informed citizenry who can make more informed personal and policy choices. Her goals are education about genetic technologies, but also to provide a way of thinking about the related ethical issues. Toward those goals, in the first chapter, Barash provides an introduction to basic genetic principles and terminology as well as a history of genetic screening and testing in the United States. She introduces some of the ethical issues associated with genetic technologies such as an individual's and society's duties and obligations towards one another, threats to autonomous decision making about genetic testing, the possibility of genetic discrimination, the ideal of informed consent and the problem of equal access to technologies. The second chapter provides a description of some of the main theories of ethical analysis, such as theories of consequentialism, deontology, rights, intuitionism, justice and altruism. The ideas of autonomy, beneficence, justice and informed consent are introduced. The third chapter on genetic privacy and discrimination is the longest in the book and includes history, examples and scenarios for thought. The following chapters include topics such as behavioral genetics, pharmacogenetics, genetic research, genetically modified foods, stem cells and cloning. Each chapter includes discussion of the relevant ethical issues, history, future concerns and often scenarios to help the reader further consider the issues. The author is successful in meeting the stated goals of the book. She provides an overview of many topics in a straightforward and understandable manner. While most genetic counselors would find the information contained in this book a review, the content is very appropriate for genetic counseling students, a general audience of undergraduate students, graduate students in other health care fields, business professionals in non-health care related industry as well as other lay audiences. Given the stated goals of the book, the second chapter on ethical theories seemed particularly brief, but the theories that were presented were incorporated throughout remaining chapters to reinforce the learning. Due to the fact that GINA became law shortly after the publishing of this book, the third chapter on genetic discrimination is already out-dated. However, the author does include mention of GINA and its possible implications. Genetic counseling is given passing reference several times in the book, but there is no explanation of the education, training, roles or ways genetic counselors help people manage ethical issues. At the end of the book there are exercises that correlate to the concepts discussed in some of the chapters. Most of the exercises are useful learning tools, with the exception of the exercise for chapter 6 which seems overly complicated and difficult to carry out. Although the book would have benefited from better editing (there were a number of misspellings and omitted words throughout), the glossary of terms and descriptions of various genetic technologies at the end are helpful. The author, Dr. Carol Isaacson Barash is an independent consultant with her own company called Genetics, Ethics & Policy Consulting, Inc. (GEPC), which specializes in the integration of genomics into health care delivery. Prior to establishing GEPC, Dr. Barash was director of a study on genetic discrimination funded by the Department of Energy. This experience perhaps explains why her chapter on genetic discrimination is the most detailed in the book. She is a trained philosopher with over twenty years experience in health care. This book is a useful tool for those interested in better understanding the complex ethical issues associated with the current and emerging technologies associated with our greater knowledge of the human genome.

Oliver O'Donovan's Critique of Autonomy

More than any other contemporary theologian, Oliver O'Donovan has revived political theology as a field of enquiry. Yet O'Donovan has been consistent in his critique of the modern idea of autonomy, judging it to be at odds with the more communitarian idea of covenanted community found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. He contrasts this modern idea, and its political implications, with the older biblical idea, also adding some basic points from Aristotle's idea of the polis. But unlike many contemporary communitarians, O'Donovan is also able to incorporate the idea of human rights into his political theology. He sees this supposedly modern idea having fuller precedence in the biblical idea of mishpat ("justice"), which he takes to be God's primordial claim on His covenanted community, a claim that sufficiently grounds both individual rights and communal rights and which enables them to function together. However, O'Donovan draws the line when it comes to the modern social contract theory, arguing that it is at odds with biblical teaching that the primary responsibility of rulers is to divine law. While agreeing with O'Donovan's rejection of autonomy and his acceptance of human rights, this paper argues against O'Donovan's theological rejection of social contract theory. Instead, it argues that a social contract is consistent with the doctrine of the covenant; indeed that the very possibility of the social contract is best explained by the doctrine of the covenant, and that this acceptance of the social contract serves the best political interests of covenanted communities (like the Jewish People and the Christian Church) in an otherwise secular world.

The Kurdish question in Iraq: historical background and future settlement

This article explores the political history of the Kurdish question in Iraq. It starts by giving a short historical background to the issue, and moves on to explain Kurdish demands and past attempts to resolve the problem, both militarily and peacefully. It then gives an account of the idea of autonomy as understood by various Iraqi governments and Kurdish leaderships. The article also concentrates on the obstacles hindering and obstructing a lasting, peaceful solution to the problem. Finally, it offers the writer’s suggestions for bridging the gap between the Arabs and Kurds in Iraq in general, and the various Kurdish leaderships and the central government in particular.

Autonomy, Gendered Subordination and Transcultural Dialogue

This paper is a theoretical and empirical investigation into whether persons in subordinate social contexts possess agency and if they do, how do we recognise and recover their agency given the oppressive conditions of their lives. It aims to achieve this through forging closer links between the philosophical arguments and the ethnographic evidence of women's agency. Through such an exercise, this paper hopes to bridge the existing gap between feminist theoretical interventions and feminist politics as well as to increase ‘sociological awareness’ within feminist philosophical arguments. In order to think about women's agency in oppressive social contexts, the paper evaluates the suitability of existing theoretical frameworks for examining, describing and capturing the autonomy of persons and concludes that a new and a more complex thinking is required to facilitate thinking about human agency within oppressive transcultural contexts. The social context of subordination, the exhibition of agency within and oppressive context and the application of the new theoretical framework is illustrated in an extensive empirical study of the contact with modernity and its accompanying ideas of autonomy and individual rights of rural women belonging to two districts in Rajasthan, North western India.

Getting Over the Denial of Aging

The of Aging: Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life, and Other Dangerous Fantasies. By Muriel R. Gillick. Harvard University Press, 2006. 341 pages. Hardcover, $25.95. There's an old vaudeville joke that goes Denial is not just the name of a river in Egypt. It's no joke to say that books denouncing will always be timely, and none is more timely that Muriel Gillick's The of Aging: Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life, and Other Dangerous Fantasies. Like Freud, she wants to disabuse us of our magical thinking about old and put in its place the reality principle. She's got her work cut out for her. Let's start with a depressing statistic. Each year, sales of antiaging nostrums break new records--more than six billion dollars last year--a strange fact when you realize that, in terms of scientific efficacy, there is no such thing as antiaging medicine. It gets worse. Today there are more doctors in the United States who are members of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine than there are board-certified geriatricians, while training of new geriatricians lags far behind the need. Health care professionals are poorly prepared for the age boom soon to be upon us--a precarious situation at a time when more than eight thousand baby boomers are turning sixty each day. For these reasons, Gillick's book could not appear at a better time. We should send a copy to every member of Congress, as well as to all those doctors peddling bogus antiaging remedies. Readers need her message more than ever, but, alas, they seem unlikely to hear it at all as they rush to pick up prescriptions for human growth hormone, antioxidants, or other dangerous fantasies that Gillick decries. Hey, it's a six billion dollar a year business and growing fast! It's enough to make one give up on the idea of autonomy (or the marketplace?) in the pursuit of health. The facts about so-called antiaging medicine are clear enough. No interventions have ever been shown to slow or reverse the biological process of aging. None. Or perhaps there's one exception: caloric restriction--that is, eating less. This drastic approach has long been proven to work with every lower organism on which it has been tried. But it means eating a lot less if you want to live longer: say eighteen hundred calories a day for the average person. Experiments with primates are now underway, but their long lifespan means the jury is still out. Yet even before our current epidemic of obesity, caloric restriction was never popular with Americans. Other remedies for aging will hit your pocketbook and perhaps damage your health with side effects (cancer, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc.), but they will fail to do what their promoters promise. Still, the quest goes on, as Ponce de Leon would have understood. Indeed, even many serious biologists believe that, before long, basic biological research may yield clues to slow the process of aging. Whether such innovations could or should take place is not Muriel Gillick's concern, nor is it the focus of this review. Gillick writes as an experienced practitioner of geriatric medicine, and she's at her best in chapters focused on that topic. But she also wants to offer advice to her fellow aging baby boomers: ... if baby boomers are to have a good old age, we will need to stop squandering resources on tests and treatments that offer little or no benefit (p. 12). Her main message appears at the beginning of the book. If we want a good old age, we need to start early--hence preventive medicine and health promotion are the way to go. But it's not easy to travel that road. Gillick believes we're spending our health care resources on all the wrong things--such as attacking uncommon and incurable conditions--while we ignore prosaic problems, like falls and social isolation, that are damaging but within our power to fix. By the time we join the ranks of the worried well, boomers who believe in autonomy will be demanding more and more screening tests. …

The dimensions of responsiveness of a health system: a Taiwanese perspective

BackgroundResponsiveness is an indicator used to measure how well a health system performs relative to non-health aspects. This study assessed whether seven dimensions proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to measure responsiveness (dignity, autonomy, confidentiality, prompt attention, social support, basic amenities, and choices of providers) are applicable in evaluating the health system of Taiwan.MethodsA key informant survey and focus group research were used in this study. The translated WHO proposed questionnaire was sent to 205 nominated key informants by mail, and 132 (64.4%) were returned. We used principal component analysis to extract factors. Linear regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between the total score and the extracted factors. A qualitative content analysis was also carried out in focus group research.ResultsPrincipal component analysis produced five factors (respect, access, confidentiality, basic amenities, and social support) that explained 63.5% of the total variances. These five factors demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and four of them (except social support) were significantly correlated with the total responsiveness score. The focus group interviews revealed health providers' communication ability and medical ethics were also highly appraised by Taiwanese.ConclusionWhen the performance of a health system is to be evaluated, elements of responsiveness proposed by WHO may have to be tailored to fit different cultural backgrounds. Four key features illustrate the uniqueness of Taiwanese perspectives: the idea of autonomy may not be conceptualized, prompt attention and choice of providers are on the same track, social support during care is trivially correlated to the total responsiveness score, and accountability of health providers is deemed essential to a health system.

Educating Honorable Warriors

Kant is not typically considered a major figure in the just war tradition's canon, although his work has informed recent discussions about international justice and just war theory. More specifically, philosophers have suggested that Kant's work may provide a coherent, normatively practical just war theory, basing this claim, in the main, on his views on the goal of peace and its purpose of establishing a cosmopolitan civil society.1 Such discussions are mostly concerned with jus ad bellum and jus in bello constraints on nations and how Kant's writings can guide deliberation and, perhaps, the considered policy and practices of governments. Yet, the fact remains that it is embodied men and women and not the metaphysical ‘nation’ who actually conduct war. Hence, this paper seeks to determine the extent to which Kant's thought might contribute to the moral deliberation of those individuals who a fortiori will be bound to jus in bello constraints. To this end, the idea of moral learning will be explored, emphasizing the Kantian idea of autonomy. The ultimate goal of this paper is to demonstrate how some aspects of Kant's thought would contribute to ethics education in a military academy.

Reason, Freedom and Well-being

I am embarrassed at being placed in the dizzying company of one of the truly great thinkers in the world. The similarities between Mill's ideas and mine partly reflect, of course, his influence on my thinking. But I also discuss some difficulties in taking Mill's whole theory without modification, since there are internal tensions within it. In a paper I published in 1967, I tried to discuss how Mill's willingness to hold on to some contrary positions depended on the nature of his empirical reading of the world. I draw on that diagnosis in commenting on some of the articles here. There are some serious issues of misinterpretation in one of the articles, which I try to clarify. I also comment on Arrow's interpretation of what is involved in the idea of autonomy and on his own way of assessing freedom, and acknowledge the seriousness of the questions he raises about the value of freedom in normative political philosophy.

The ontic interconnectedness and interdependence of language and communicative actions

An analysis of the interconnectedness of different functional domains within reality opens up the possibility to account for the multivocality of terms and for an analysis of the multifaceted meaning of language and communicative actions – their intertwinement with the integral meaning-coherence of reality. Therefore, the focus of this follow-up article is directed at the interdependent nature of communicative (i.e., socially disclosed) language use. Reflection on the problem of unity and diversity guides the discernment of the dualism present in Habermas's view and the assessment of the definition of communication in terms of the idea of a transition and/or sharing of meaning. Crucial ideas of Saussure, Derrida and Habermas are related to the mutability and immutability of the sign before the significance of the distinction between entity and function is applied to the conditions for and inter-functional connections of language and communicative actions. A discussion of the multifaceted coherence in which communicative actions are embedded subsequently receives attention. Finally, in view of the distinction between principles and their application (form-giving, positivisation) conventions, construction and the idea of autonomy are briefly assessed.

Peter Winch and Political Authority

This article explores a neglected aspect of Peter Winch's work: his writings on political authority. It seeks to show that this neglect is undeserved. Three themes are interweaved in the discussion. First, the major developments in Winch's thinking between his first published article on political authority (in a symposium with Richard Peters) and his later writings on the subject are identified and assessed. Criticism is focused mainly on his tendency to be insufficiently attentive to the distinction between being in authority and being an authority, and the implications this has for the distinctiveness of political authority. Secondly, particular attention is given to some of the key strands in Winch's analysis. These include his distinction between the nature and the grounds of political authority, how the role of consent is to be understood in the light of this distinction, how an adequate understanding political authority does not undermine our ideas of autonomy, and what it might mean to reject the whole idea of political authority. Finally, the article concludes by briefly defending the value of Winch's approach to political philosophy. Earlier it is shown that Winch's analysis does not foreclose on a range of political responses to authority, and this point is generalised to argue for a philosophical approach (like Winch’s) that aims at understanding, rather than at advancing any particular set of moral or political principles.

Rivers Too Cross: River Beautification and Settlement in Perth, Western Australia

In chronicles of the settlement of Western Australia the conflict between hopes for a bountiful interior and the reality of an often harsh, unforgiving country accounts for the depiction of landscape features as strange or uncanny. In towns, streets lost their decisiveness, laid out as they often were on shifting sands. Forests, having been observed with curiosity early in the nineteenth century in many parts of Australia for their park-like appearance, became a hindrance to development in the west by the end of the century. Frequently dry in Summer, prone to flooding in Winter, frustratingly sluggish and perennially salty, rivers systems such as the Swan and its tributary the Avon suffered various attempts beginning in the late nineteenth century to dam them, drain them or turn their shores into something other than miserable rubbish heaps. This article will consider 'the river' as a topographical feature evoking ideas of autonomy and freedom within the English pastoral tradition. It will examine the Swan River system as an object of governance and site of successive transformations in the decades immediately before and after the federation of Australia. Playing an important role in the imaginative construction of place, the desire for waterfronts to define the edges of Western Australia's capital city and towns or for watercourses to provide orientation in the bush was coupled with an imperative that native rivers be properly 'trained' as instances of national enterprise.

Taking Rights Structurally: Disability, Rights and Social Worker Responses to Direct Payments

Summary This article examines the link between a justice and rights discourse and disability policy and practice. Specifically, it considers social worker responses to direct pay ments, a policy which has been linked to a discourse of social justice and rights. The article initially considers the nature of justice and rights, arguing that these can plausibly be seen to be grounded in the idea of autonomy and that a rights or justice based social policy and practice must be grounded in the protection, enhancement and development of the capacity for autonomous action. The article then presents partial findings of a research project, which sampled social workers' views and attitudes towards direct payments in three local authorities. The findings suggest that social workers are aware of the link between direct payments and autonomy and are generally very supportive of the move to a rights based approach to policy and practice as evidenced by programmes such as direct payments. The paper also concludes that structural constraints limit social workers' ability to fully function from a rights based approach to disability.

From team ideology to sustainable work systems

When we look at the bulging group work literature, there aren’t many bigger riddles to solve than the question of why the discrepancy between propagation and realization of teams is, at the least, not getting any smaller. In this article I analyze the reasons for the sobering practice and the team-bias in the scientific optic. I describe two theoretical concepts and a method for the study of the dynamics, contradictions and limitations in team-based organizations. They are part of a resource-centered perspective, which is based upon four axioms: (1) In the study of complex social environments the main focus must shift from strategic action to the side effects of inter-action, and to their continuous evaluation. (2) There is no a priori unit for the study and design of work systems like the ‘team’; the focus should lie on the contextual embeddedness of cooperative units. (3) Autonomy has been a fetish of emancipatory work design approaches in a dual sense: an unquestioned goal, and a reified category. The new reality of decentralized work forces us to abandon the dualistic thinking dichotomies like autonomy-heteronomy. Autonomy is not a resource itself; it has to be understood as relation between job requirements and resources, task and context. (4) Challenging traditional ideas of autonomy, the concept of sustainability offers a new perspective for understanding and developing work. It focuses on the balance of consumptive and creative effects in the use of human, social and cultural resources.

The Limits of Neutrality: Toward a Weakly Substantive Account of Autonomy

Leading accounts of personal autonomy arecontent-neutral:they insist that there are noa prioriconstraints on the content of the desires or values that might motivate an autonomous action. In Gerald Dworkin's provocative words, ‘the autonomous person can be a tyrant or a slave, a saint or sinner, a rugged individualist or champion of fraternity, a leader or follower.’ ‘There is nothing in the idea of autonomy that precludes a person from saying, “I want to be the kind of person who acts at the command of others. I define myself as a slave and endorse those attitudes and preferences. My autonomy consists in being a slave.” ’ John Christman similarly claims that ‘any desire, no matter how evil, self-sacrificing, or slavish it might be’ could be autonomously formed. The same seems to apply to Harry Frankfurt's view, that actions are autonomous if they stem from second-order volitions that reflect what the agent cares about; it puts no constraints on the content of what a person might care about. All of these accounts hold that the mere content of a desire or value is never sufficient to rule out that it might be autonomously acted on by someone.