Gerald Dworkin

Autonomy and behavior control.

nology raises important issues for our understanding of human nature and our moral views about how people ought to influence one another. On the theoretical level we find claims that an adequate explanatory scheme for understanding human behavior can dispense with notions of free will, dignity, and autonomy. On the practical level we are faced with claims of effectiveness, efficiency, and moral legitimacy for methods of influencing people such as operant conditioning, psychotropic drugs, electrical stimulation of the brain, and psychosurgery. The theoretical and practical issues are, of course, linked. Our views as to what it is permissible to do to people reflect our views about the existence and desirability of various conditions. If autonomy is neither desirable nor possible then the question whether different methods affect autonomy in different ways will hardly be an interesting one. If, on the other hand, autonomy is both possible and desirable, then the possibility that various techniques of controlling behavior affect autonomy in distinctive ways, and to different degrees, may play a crucial role in our normative debates about such matters.

Taking Risks, Assessing Responsibility

Over the past decade, Americans have become increasingly aware of the extent to which personal behavior bears directly upon health. Reports on the terrible costs of smoking have been followed by attempts to trace the impact of diet, exercise, work patterns, and leisure styles on the incidence and prevalence of disease and mortality. Though epidemiologists and public health officials debate the finer points of such studies, there is little question that they are significant. Individually and collectively we might do much to alter the morbidity statistics of the populations in the advanced industrial world if we were able to change behavior.

The serpent beguiled me and i did eat: Entrapment and the creation of crime

This paper examines the legitimacy of pro-active law enforcement techniques, i.e. the use of deception to produce the performance of a criminal act in circumstances where it can be observed by law enforcement officials. It argues that law enforcement officials should only be allowed to create the intent to commit a crime in individuals who they have probable cause to suppose are already engaged or intending to engage in criminal activity of a similar nature.

The nature of autonomy

In both theoretical and applied contexts, the concept of autonomy has assumed increasing importance in recent normative philosophical discussion. Given various problems to be clarified or resolved, the author characterises the concept by first setting out conditions of adequacy. The author then links the notion of autonomy to the identification and critical reflection of an agent upon his or her first-order motivations. It is only when a person identifies with the influences that motivate him or her, assimilates them to himself or herself, that he or she is autonomous. In addition, this process of identification must itself meet certain procedural constraints.

HARM AND THE VOLENTI PRINCIPLE

This is an essay on the limits of the Criminal Law. In particular, it is about what principles, if any, determine whether it is legitimate for the state to criminalize certain conduct. Joel Feinberg in his great work on the moral limits of the criminal law argues that we need only two principles. One is a principle regulating harm to other people and the other is an offense principle regulating certain kinds of offensive conduct. I examine various aspects of his argument. In particular I concentrate on his use of the Volenti Principle: He who consents cannot be wrongfully harmed by conduct to which he has fully consented. Feinberg uses the principle to argue that certain kinds of consensual conduct cannot be forbidden unless we adopt some kind of legal moralism, that is, unless conduct can be forbidden on the grounds that it is immoral even though the conduct harms no other person. The first section provides an overview of Feinberg’s account of the limits of criminalization. The subsequent sections explore the possibility of prohibiting certain kinds of consensual conduct while avoiding legal moralism by limiting the use of the Volenti Principle.

Contractualism and the Normativity of Principles

“When I ask myself what reason the fact that an action would be wrong provides me with not to do it, my answer is that such an action would be one that I could not justify to others on grounds I could expect them to accept.” Scanlon advances his contractarian theory in order to defend a view about the nature of moral reasoning and its reason-giving force. Judgments of right and wrong, in his view, are claims about reasons. In particular they are claims about the adequacy of reasons for accepting or rejecting principles under certain conditions. I want to explore in this essay some of the implications and difficulties, the strengths and weaknesses of this view. In a famous passage, Hume sets out a problem for ethics: “Take any action allow’d to be vicious. Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find the matter of fact, the real existence, which you call vice. In whatever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object.” Hume, of course, thought that we have to turn our attention from the object to the objector. It is the sentiment of disapprobation in the breast of the beholder that explains the viciousness of the deed. Hume was a subjectivist. Scanlon clearly rejects subjectivism. But he does not believe that the property of wrongness lies in the objects in the way that its spatiotemporal properties do. The wrongness of our acts is explained by our

Equal Respect and the Enforcement of Morality

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the question of when, if ever, the state may use coercion to enforce majority views about what types of conduct are right or wrong, noble or base, decent or indecent. Such interest has been generated by both political and philosophibal pressures. In recent political history, controversies over such issues as abortion, homosexuality, pornography, textbooks in schools, new reproductive technologies such as surrogate parenting and in vitro fertilization, and faith healing have focused attention on the role of the state in supporting or opposing various moral views. In political philosophy, often a theoretical reflection of the political debates of the time, we have seen renewed attempts to provide a satisfactory foundation for traditional liberal (in the sense of Millian) views of the legitimate scope of state power. In particular, there has been an emphasis on the neutrality of the liberal state and the right of individuals to be treated as equals by the state.

Sex, Suicide, and Doctors

Paul J. Weithman’s argument is a constitutional one.1 Agreeing with many liberals that the state may not enforce controversial conceptions of the meaning of life on citizens who disagree, he nevertheless believes that the state may legitimately forbid physician-assisted dying. This is because there is another ground for such a ban. There are legitimate reasons for an absolute prohibition on physicians’ ever intending the death of their patients. ‘‘The reasons that doctors should hold themselves to a prohibition on intentionally causing their patients’ deaths are quite similar to the reasons that doctors should hold themselves to an absolute prohibition on seducing them’’ (p. 554). This is an argument from analogy, and I shall argue that the two kinds of cases are sufficiently different in character that the argument fails. The case that Weithman takes to be a settled matter is the absolute prohibition on physicians’ intending to seduce their patients. He presents what seems to me a completely successful argument. To show that an absolute prohibition on physicians’ intending the death of their patients is required he must show that the features which explain the former prohibition hold (or at least enough of them hold) in the case of the latter prohibition.

Autonomy and Self-Respect.

Sources and acknowledgements Introduction 1. Servility and self-respect 2. Self-respect reconsidered 3. Autonomy and benevolent lies 4. The importance of autonomy 5. Symbolic protest and calculated silence 6. Moral purity and the lesser evil 7. Self-regarding suicide: a modified Kantian view 8. Ideals of human excellence and preserving natural environments 9. Weakness of will and character 10. Promises to oneself 11. Social snobbery and human dignity 12. Pains and projects: justifying to oneself 13. The message of affirmative action Index.

The Theory and Practice of Autonomy.

Preface Acknowledgments Part I. Theory: 1. The nature of autonomy 2. The value of autonomy 3. Moral autonomy 4. Autonomy, science, and morality 5. Is more choice better than less? Part II. Practice: 6. Consent, representation, and proxy consent 7. Autonomy and informed consent 8. Paternalism: some second thoughts 9. The serpent beguiled me and I did eat: entrapment and the creation of crime 10. Behaviour control and design Epilogue Bibliography Index.