Autonomy - Curious "Existence" Of,

I have already taken autonomy to be an article of faith. Perhaps I've made a solid case for it, perhaps I have not. What I most conspicuously have failed to do is define the term in which I believe. I've called it a lot of names, but none of them very clear. "Choice." "Freedom of Will." "Liberty." These aren't easy terms. Protestants believe in predestination and the freedom of will. Catholics believe Protestants are crazy for thinking both can be true at once. The term is clearly elastic enough that it can describe at least two separate visions of human nature, and important enough that both visions stubbornly lay claim to the same term.

The concept of "Free Will" occupies contested symbolic real-estate. Very few definitions of "Free Will" allow scope for alternative definitions to be equally true. Much like God, the nature of Free Will is an intellectually polarizing concept: The concept itself precedes its definition. The greatest disputes among its proponents lies in the nature of what it is. Environmentalists are generally in substantive agreement about what "Environment" is. But Liberals are not at all in general agreement about what "Liberty" is. And liberals are only a very small subset of the group of people who believe in Free Will...

Earlier, I declared the belief in "Free Will" to be the first of the moral decisions. If this is to be a fair assertion, I must define what exactly the belief in "Free Will" entails. That's a large definition, which is preceded by a digression.

When it comes to God, I have an objective position. I believe that God does not exist. That is not the same as stating "I do not believe in God." I do believe in God. With most humans thinking about God, and most humans preoccupied with understanding God, it would be a non-sequitur to declare him "dead" or to disbelieve in his existence and his importance to human affairs. I also believe that there is an objective reality, apart from human consideration, and I believe God does not exist there. God is a thing of people needed to explain a thing among people. God is a symbol describing a crucial absence. In its formlessness, the formlessness of the void, it is something whose shape is fiercely contested precisely because it is something which is not subject to clear definition. God embodies the limits of the human experience - all that lies beyond the threshold of that which we cannot know and that which we cannot bear. God is the frontier of the mind.

"Free Will" is a similar phenomenon. Rather than expressing a concrete thing, it seeks to articulate an ephemera - one of those shadowy things we know of ourselves and trust with a certain faith exists in a similar form in others. Because our definition of autonomy sets up the basis of our ethical standards, the nature of choice becomes an imperative definition. If we are to establish that others should behave ethically, whether moral or not (and later we shall), then we need to assess realistically the limits of human capacity for choice. We cannot ask of humans to manifest more than the limits of their nature. Yet, we cannot afford to ask less than those limits of our fellow men. If God is the symbol which describes all that lies outside of our influence, outside of our will, and outside of our choice - then autonomy is it's mirror opposite. It is no accident that religion cedes Free Will to the actions of man. "Free Will" is all that we COULD DO - a class of actions far larger than the sum of all that we WILL DO.

This is why its definition is so hotly contested. If freedom of will is sufficiently constricted, that constriction can justify a range of behaviors that most humans would find unconscionable. If the conecpt is sufficiently expanded, it can excuse apathy towards natural conditions that would otherwise be inexcusable. If we take "free will" to be a social thing, yet no less true therefore, we find that the misdefinition of it may lead otherwise morally sound individuals into error.

We have to get it right, even in full knowledge of the high probability that we will get it wrong. It's an imperative.