Kantian Personal Autonomy

Jeremy Waldron has recently raised the question of whether there is anything approximating the creative self-authorship of personal autonomy in the writings of Immanuel Kant. After considering the possibility that Kantian prudential reasoning might serve as a conception of personal autonomy, I argue that the elements of a more suitable conception can be found in Kant’s Tugendlehre, or “Doctrine of Virtue”—specifically, in the imperfect duties of self-perfection and the practical love of others. This discovery is important for at least three reasons: first, it elucidates the relationship among the various conceptions of autonomy employed by personal-autonomy theorists and contemporary Kantians; second, it brings to the surface previously unnoticed or undernoticed features of Kant’s moral theory; and third, it provides an essential line of defense against certain critiques of contemporary Kantian theories, especially that of John Rawls

A Critique of Alfred R Mele’s Work on Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy

The book, Autonomous Agents: From Self-Control to Autonomy (1995), by Alfred R. Mele, deals primarily with two main concepts, “self-control” and “individual autonomy,” and the relationship between them. The book is divided into two parts: (1) a view of self-control, the self-controlled person, and behaviour manifesting self-control, and (2) a view of personal autonomy, the autonomous person, and autonomous behaviour. Mele (Ibid.) defines self-control as the opposite of the Aristotelian concept of akrasia, or the contrary of akrasia, which implies weakness of will, incontinence, or lack of self-control—the state of mind in which one acts against one’s better judgement. According to Mele, the concept of self-control can be approached from two perspectives: (a) how self-control affects human behaviour, and (b) how self-control-associated behavior can enhance our understanding of ‘personal autonomy’ and ‘autonomous behaviour’—personal autonomy requires self-control, and autonomous persons and autonomous behaviour are naturally found together. Therefore, I might say that self-control is essential to enhancing one’s autonomy. In part I, we find an account of self-control where Mele argues that even an ideally self-controlled person might lack autonomy. In part II, Mele gives an explicit account of autonomy and explains what must be added to self-control to achieve autonomy. This is the pivotal claim made by Mele (dismantling the intuitively connected notions of self-control and autonomy)

Computer Modeling of Personal Autonomy and Legal Equilibrium

Empirical studies of personal autonomy as state and status of individual freedom, security, and capacity to control own life, particularly by independent legal reasoning, are need dependable models and methods of precise computation. Three simple models of personal autonomy are proposed. The linear model of personal autonomy displays a relation between freedom as an amount of agent's action and responsibility as an amount of legal reaction and shows legal equilibrium, the balance of rights and duties needed for sustainable development of any community. The model algorithm of judge personal autonomy shows that judicial decision making can be partly automated, like other human jobs. Model machine learning of autonomous lawyer robot under operating system constitution illustrates the idea of robot rights. Robots, i.e. material and virtual mechanisms serving the people, deserve some legal guarantees of their rights such as robot rights to exist, proper function and be protected by the law. Robots, actually, are protected as any human property by the wide scope of laws, starting with Article 17 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the current level of human trust in autonomous devices and their role in contemporary society needs stronger legislation to guarantee the robot rights.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, presented at Computer Science On-line Conference 201

Model of Empowerment to Improve Autonomy Directly Observed Treatment (DOT) Tuberculosis Patients

Empowerment as not yet optimal health promotion efforts done to enhance the autonomy of Directly Observed Treatment (DOT), which affect the success of the recovery of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. The purpose of research was to develop a model empowerment based on Health Promotion and Health Literacy with approach to nursing intervention in an effort enhance the autonomy of the DOT - pulmonary TB patients. The method was an observational analytic with cross sectional approach. Multistage random sampling was DOT-pulmonary TB patients to decide the district and simple random sampling was assigned to choose the participants, a total of 253 DOT- pulmonary TB patients new case with acid resistant bacilli positive on the advanced phase in this study. The study conducted in five districts in Surabaya City (center, north, south, east and west). Data were collected by questionnaire on variables namely personal, cognitive and affective, nursing intervention, commitment, family supports, health literacy and DOT- autonomy. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with LISREL is used for constructing predictive model. Result : This study found a new model which was developed based on combination of Health Promotion Model (HPM) and Health Literacy (HL). Statistical result confirm that personal, cognitive and affective, health literacy and family support considered as important factors in improving DOT-autonomy. Conclusion : DOT- autonomy will improve by considering four main factors, personal, cognitive and affective, health literacy, family support. This model can be adapted by District Health Office Surabaya City as the main actor regional health development. In addition, this model may become a reference for other district in improving their nursing intervention in community setting

Teacher and student perceptions of the development of learner autonomy : a case study in the biological sciences

Biology teachers in a UK university expressed a majority view that student learning autonomy increases with progression through university. A minority suggested that pre-existing diversity in learning autonomy was more important and that individuals not cohorts differ in their learning autonomy. They suggested that personal experience prior to university and age were important and that mature students are more autonomous than 18-20 year olds. Our application of an autonomous learning scale (ALS) to four year-groups of biology students confirmed that the learning autonomy of students increases through their time at university but not that mature students are necessarily more autonomous than their younger peers. It was evident however that year of study explained relatively little

Psychology well- being at workplaces

Psychological well-being indicates the existence of positive relationships with others, personal personality, autonomy, meaning in life, and personal growth and development. According to Ronald (2017), psychology well-being is a balance between challenging life events and rewarding, and is achieved through a balance of affected life events

Moral enhancement and personal autonomy.

In this thesis, I examine the extent to which moral enhancement, the biomedical alteration of an individual’s disposition to act according to good or bad motives, will in uence his capacity for selfgovernance. Following a discussion of the salient features of moral enhancement, a plausible list of conditions against which to measure the compatibility of moral enhancement with personal autonomy is expounded. e core elements of moral enhancement are weighed against these conditions in order to establish the ways in which these core elements are compatible with the conditions of personal autonomy. I argue that moral enhancement need not lead to a diminishment of personal autonomy, provided it serves merely as a mechanism to help an agent overcome the deterministic limitations that prevent him from bringing his lower-order desires into conformity with the higher-order desires that he has arrived at through independent, thoughtful deliberation

Personal Autonomy in Trust-Based Interactions. An Experimental Analysis

The paper experimentally investigates the interactions between restrictions to personal autonomy and reciprocity in a Principal-Agent relationship. Previous experimental contributions have shown that actions aimed at restricting decisional autonomy are likely to reduce reciprocity in trust- based relationships. Results in our experiment, which is a modified version of the Investment Game, differ from previous findings and conform more to standard economic predictions. Principals in our interaction do not support the self-determination of agents. On the other side, agents do not show any positive reciprocity when allowed to freely determine their behavior in the game. (This is an updated version of the CEEL Working Paper 2-05)Principal-Agent relationship, Trust, Reciprocity, Self-Determination, Incentives

The future of social is personal: the potential of the personal data store

This chapter argues that technical architectures that facilitate the longitudinal, decentralised and individual-centric personal collection and curation of data will be an important, but partial, response to the pressing problem of the autonomy of the data subject, and the asymmetry of power between the subject and large scale service providers/data consumers. Towards framing the scope and role of such Personal Data Stores (PDSes), the legalistic notion of personal data is examined, and it is argued that a more inclusive, intuitive notion expresses more accurately what individuals require in order to preserve their autonomy in a data-driven world of large aggregators. Six challenges towards realising the PDS vision are set out: the requirement to store data for long periods; the difficulties of managing data for individuals; the need to reconsider the regulatory basis for third-party access to data; the need to comply with international data handling standards; the need to integrate privacy-enhancing technologies; and the need to future-proof data gathering against the evolution of social norms. The open experimental PDS platform INDX is introduced and described, as a means of beginning to address at least some of these six challenges