Our unwillingness to delegate our important choices to others
Proponents of the argument for autonomy do not discuss exactly how the cases of our wanting to make our own choices when we believe that others could choose better should be defined. Someone might, for example, argue that, the rare cases of genuine self-sacrifice aside, making one’s own choices always enhances one’s wellbeing so that there might not be cases where a person could decide to make her own choices at the expense of her wellbeing. I will now put this problem aside and, for the sake of argument, assume that making one’s own decisions would not enhance one’s wellbeing more than letting others choose for one.
Imagine then the case of a patient who is considering whether or not he should undergo a complicated medical operation. Let us assume that, although the patient qualifies as autonomous, he is not as capable of taking in all the medical information relevant to assessing the risks and benefits of the operation as his physician is and that, as his physician is more mature and experienced in life than he is, the physician is more able to determine what would best serve the patient’s good that the patient himself is. The patient is aware of these differences between him and his physician, but still wants to make his own decision about the operation. I assume that this would qualify as the kind of case that the argument for autonomy refers to. Someone might however argue that the patient’s condition has shattered his existence so that he is not able to make autonomous decisions after all. To sidestep the complications presented by this type of criticism, I will for now concentrate on the case of healthy persons, in which this kind of problem does not arise when other things are assumed to be equal. I however take it that there can be autonomous patients and think that the discussion below is relevant to the questions arising within the medical sphere too.
I assume that the choices of whom to marry and what line of job to pursue qualify as the kind of important choices that the argument for autonomy refers to. Consider then the hypothetical case of person A who is faced with the option of delegating her choices of whom to marry and what line of job to pursue to experts. Let us assume that that studies show a significantly higher level of satisfaction among marriages and jobs chosen by experts than among those chosen by the individuals themselves, and that A is aware of this. A has had many relationships, but to her great regret she has not been able to find a suitable partner for marriage. Her situation with career is similar to her predicament with marriage. She has experimented with many different kinds of jobs, but is quite frustrated because she has not found anything that would feel at all right for her.
A is thus in a situation where she has good reason to believe that others could make better choices for her than she herself can. Is it plausible that A, as a reasonable and autonomous person, would not be willing to delegate her choices of who to marry and what line of job to pursue to experts? Because A very much wants to get a satisfying career and find a suitable partner for marriage, it seems plausible that, rather than not being willing to delegate her decisions to experts, she would welcome the possibility to do that. By letting experts choose for her, A could finally get her life to go the way she wants it to go. A could, I think, be reluctant to renounce these choices to experts only if she were not really interested in finding a suitable partner and a good career.
Would paying attention to the reasons that proponents of the argument for autonomy present to explain our alleged unwillingness to let others choose for us make that argument more plausible? As was said above, when they explain it, proponents of the argument for autonomy explain this reluctance by saying that in making our own choices we are being agents, we are using our rational capacities, we are controlling our own lives, we are having a sense of living our own lives, we are creating and forming ourselves, we are giving our lives meaning, purpose, and distinctive uniqueness, and/or we are expressing ourselves.
Referring to these reasons does not seem to be helpful for the proponents of the argument for autonomy. To mention few of the most conspicuous problems, it seems not at all clear that we (should) want our lives to be unique - if indeed a coherent sense can be given to the notion of a person’s life being unique,
14 — a heteronomous person can have a sense of living her own life, and exercising one’s rational capacities does not presuppose autonomy in the sense relevant here. For exercising one’s rational capacities is a mental activity that does not require making real choices among options that are actually available for one and, thus, persons with no free choice, such as slaves, can exercise their rational capacities. Furthermore, adopting the values that the proponents of the argument for autonomy present to explain our alleged reluctance towards letting others choose for us does not commit us to accepting that there is reason to allow persons to make their own choices when they consider others more capable of getting good results for them, since each of these values can be pursued when persons are better at making choices than others, or equally good with them. Let us however now put these problems aside and, with these alleged reasons for wanting to make our own choices in mind, consider A’s life after she decided not to let experts make her choices of whom to marry and what line of job to pursue.
A continued to seek a partner, but could not find a suitable one. A couple of times she thought she had found her perfect match, and she even married twice, but her marriages ended in divorces. She became even more frustrated with her work, which currently is nothing but a drag for her. Due to marital and work problems, she has become depressive and considers that only alcohol can console her, etc. However, what has happened to A follows from her own autonomous choices. She has been an agent and used her rational capacities to create herself and to control her life, she has had a sense of living her own life, and she has defined her life’s meaning and purpose in her own assumedly unique way. A then complains to B that she has ruined her life and that she is miserable. B asks her: “Can you really find nothing of value in your life?” After considering B’s question for a while, A answers: “It is true that I have completely messed up my life, but there is one thing that I can be proud of, one thing that definitely has value for me: it is
me who has brought about this disaster!” If autonomy would have value for us independently of its contribution to our wellbeing, A’s answer could be considered as a serious and reasonable one. However, rather than as a serious answer to the question presented to her, A’s reply cannot be taken as anything else than an ironic self-pitying remark made in order to ridicule both herself and the person presenting the question. In other words, although A is, and has been, autonomous, her autonomy as such has no value for her.
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A proponent of the argument for autonomy might insist that A’s case does not show that we do not value our autonomy irrespective of its effects on our wellbeing, but merely that we value other things in addition to our autonomy. Although A does value her autonomy, this objection could proceed, she values the wellbeing that getting a satisfying job and a good marriage assumedly could have brought even more. However, the argument for autonomy claims that we put so much value on making our own choices in important matters of our lives that we are not willing to give it up even if we were convinced that others could make better choices for us than we can. If this were true, A should not be more interested in her wellbeing than she is in her autonomy.
It might also be suggested that A’s life still went better than it would have gone without autonomy; her life would have been even worse if it had been ruined by someone else than A herself. However, I would argue that bad choices are the worse for us the more they are of our own making. If, for example, a person commits what she considers to be a terrible crime autonomously, why should she consider it to be positively valuable for her that it was she who committed the crime? If committing the crime requires some special skills that the person has to a rare degree, she can be proud of having these skills, but it would be intuitively implausible to maintain that her using these skills in a way that she considers to be bad could have intrinsic positive value for her.
Assuming that experts could have chosen a good job and a suitable partner for A, those accepting the argument for autonomy might still claim that in A’s case the imbalance between autonomy and wellbeing is too big, and that if the increase in wellbeing that A could have gained by renouncing her choices to the experts had been smaller, A would not have had reason to be willing to let the experts make her choices for her. But what would be an acceptable balance between autonomy and wellbeing for proponents of the argument for autonomy?
Glover (1977, p. 81) says that if we were hideously tortured or going mad, we might be willing to sacrifice our autonomy to avoid these disasters. But referring to that kind of balance between autonomy and wellbeing would not support the argument for autonomy, since even A was not, nor is, hideously tortured and there is no serious threat of her going mad.
To get a case where the imbalance between autonomy and wellbeing cannot be too big for proponents of the argument for autonomy, let us consider the case where renouncing one’s choices to others could bring one only a small gain in wellbeing. Let us assume that B has found a partner that she likes very much and that she is pursuing a career that brings her great satisfaction. She is quite happy with both her fiancé and her job, but still thinks that there are some things that could be even better. B is then offered the possibility to delegate her decisions of whom to marry and what line of job to pursue to experts, and she is aware that studies show a higher level of satisfaction among marriages and jobs chosen by experts than among those chosen by the individuals themselves. Should B, as a reasonable and autonomous person, be reluctant towards delegating her decisions to experts?
I think that B could be willing to let experts make her marriage and career choices. And even if she were not, this could not show that B values her autonomy irrespective of its effects on her wellbeing. It is plausible that B is emotionally attached to both her fiancé and her job and is therefore not willing to let go of them even though she believes that the experts could be a little bit better in choosing a partner and a job for her than she herself is.
16 And although the studies show a higher level of satisfaction among marriages and jobs chosen by experts than among those chosen by individuals themselves, B may still find it doubtful that in her case experts really could succeed better than she herself. She is after all a highly competent person, and probably knows herself better than the experts. When B considers these things, she may think that, since she is faring sufficiently well already, in her case it does not pay to resort to any outside help. Her reluctance towards letting others to make her choices would thus ultimately be based on her valuing her wellbeing, not on her seeing her autonomy as valuable irrespective of its role in promoting her wellbeing.
It could be claimed that although the reason for our unwillingness to let others make our choices can sometimes be that we distrust others’ ability to make better choices than we can, etc., there still are cases where this reluctance is based on our putting intrinsic value on our autonomy. But what reason does one have to accept this? I am unwilling to let others make my important life choices for me. But when I consider the possibility of letting others choose for me and find myself being reluctant towards doing that, I do not think about autonomy, agency, self-creation, expressing myself, etc., at least not irrespective of their possible role in promoting my wellbeing. Because I think there is great variation in what is good and bad for individual persons and believe that determining what would promote a person’s wellbeing requires, among other things, a lot of specific knowledge about that person, I simply do not trust that others really could make choices that would be better for me than the ones that I can make, and my reluctance towards letting others choose for me is based on that. In addition to those discussed above, the argument for autonomy confronts still other problems. Below I turn to those difficulties.
Delegating our choices to others and autonomy
Proponents of the argument for autonomy thus aim to demonstrate that autonomy has intrinsic value for us by drawing attention to the alleged fact that we are not willing to delegate our important choices to other people even if we believe that they can make better choices than we can. A problem with this line of thinking is that letting others to make our important choices for us need not be incompatible with our being autonomous. If the person delegating her choices to others is autonomous to begin with and nobody manipulates or tricks her into renouncing her choices, coerces her, etc., in the understanding of the nature of individual autonomy now adopted, she remains autonomous after letting others make her important choices for her. Indeed, if others are more capable of getting the kind of results that the person wants, the person who lets others make her choices for her can thereby become even more autonomous than she were to begin with. This is because, as a consequence of letting others make her important choices for her, her life goes more in the way that she wants than it would have gone if she had made her choices by herself. Although the person resorts to other people’s help, she does this autonomously and remains as a self-governing agent. At least for those accepting the procedural conception of autonomy, letting others make choices for one can thus be one autonomous decision among others. But if letting others choose for one does not compromise one’s autonomy, arguing that we would not be willing to let others make our choices for us even if we believed them to be able to make better choices than we cannot demonstrate that we put intrinsic value on our autonomy.
A proponent of the argument for autonomy might object that we should see autonomy as a property of decisions and choices and that if a person lets others make her choices for her, she cannot be autonomous anymore. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that autonomy is not primarily a property of persons, but a characteristic of the decisions and choices that persons make. However, when, for example, a patient autonomously decides to undergo a complicated surgery, we can reasonably consider her as autonomous with respect to that surgery even though she does not autonomously choose each action performed during the operation. Similarly, an autonomous person remains autonomous after letting others choose a job and a partner for her. If it is objected that the patient who gives her autonomous consent to undergo the surgery assesses each of the actions that will be performed during the operation beforehand and gives her advanced consent to them, it can be responded that this is possible in the case of the person who delegates her career and marriage choices to others too.
A critic might still insist that, even if her life would go more in the way that she wants it to go after she renounces her choices to others, the person who lets others choose for her is heteronomous with respect to making the particular choices that others then make on her behalf. As the person does not make these choices herself, this possible objection could proceed, she is not in control of them anymore. There are two points I would like to make concerning this possible criticism. First, the notion of ‘control’; can be understood in different ways. But at least when the person is able to withdraw her consent to letting others choose for her, it is intuitively plausible to accept that, in the sense relevant here, she has control over the choices that others make on her behalf. And in medicine, with the exception of patients like those who are under the influence of heavy anaesthetic, a patient who has given her informed consent to undergo a treatment is usually able to withdraw this consent if that is what she wants to do. Second, contrary to what this criticism presupposes, we should not accept that a person can be in the relevant sense in control of choices, decisions, and actions only if she performs them by herself. Accepting that a person can be autonomous with respect to choices, decisions, and actions only if she controls them in the sense that she performs them by herself has the counterintuitive implication that patients can remain autonomous only if they treat themselves without any resort to outside help.
17 Consequently, I take it that this criticism should not be accepted.
Its explanation of our alleged unwillingness to let others make our choices for us results in a still further problem for the argument for autonomy. On the basis of my own case, I would argue that a person who considers the possibility of letting others choose for him and finds himself being reluctant towards doing that need not think about autonomy, self-creation, expressing herself, giving his life unique meaning, etc., at least not independently of their possible role in enhancing the person’s wellbeing. If it is required that these things are an autonomous person’s reasons for not letting others choose for her, it seems that the procedural conception of autonomy is being left behind. Although making such a requirement would not result in presenting substantive ends for autonomous persons so that one would then maintain, for example, that wanting to be a subservient housewife or requesting for euthanasia can never be autonomous, it would however rule out some substantive views on other than purely procedural grounds. To maintain that an autonomous person wants to express herself, that an autonomous person wants to have a distinctive and unique life, etc. is to say, for example, that a person who does not want to stand out from others and prefers to live a quiet and ordinary life that is not expressive of an unique self, etc. is heteronomous. And, for obvious reasons, saying that this kind of person is heteronomous cannot be based on purely procedural points of departure. Thus, the view maintaining that an autonomous person does not want to let others choose for her because she wants to express herself, because she wants to have an unique life, etc. is incompatible with the procedural conception of autonomy that the proponents of the argument for autonomy accept.
It might be objected that at least agency and having control over one’s life are the kind of reasons that are compatible with accepting a procedural conception of autonomy. However, in voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, for example, one ceases to be an agent and loses control over one’s life. If a conception of autonomy rules out these procedures to begin with, it cannot be a purely procedural conception of autonomy. In other words, if the argument for autonomy presupposes that one must want to be an agent and to have control over one’s life so that one cannot want to request for euthanasia or to desire to make a suicide, then its conception of autonomy is not procedural.
To recapitulate, the argument for autonomy consists of maintaining that we would not be willing to let others make our important choices for us even if we believed that they could make better choices than we can. This is taken to demonstrate that we put intrinsic value on our autonomy. And some of the proponents of the argument for autonomy maintain that our alleged unwillingness to let others choose for us can be explained by referring to the fact that in making our own choices we are being agents, we are using our rational capacities, we are controlling our own lives, we are having a sense of living our own lives, we are creating and forming ourselves, we are giving our lives meaning, purpose, and distinctive uniqueness, and/or we are expressing ourselves. Above I argued for several points against the argument for autonomy. First, contrary to what the argument for autonomy presupposes, it plausible that autonomous and reasonable persons are willing to let others choose for them if they believe that others can make better choices than they themselves can. Second, many of the reasons that proponents of the argument for autonomy present for our alleged reluctance towards letting others choose for us do not presuppose autonomy. Third, accepting the reasons for our alleged unwillingness to let others choose for us that the proponents of the argument for us that the proponents of the argument for autonomy refer to does not commit one to accepting that persons should be allowed to make their own choices when other could choose better than them, because these reasons can be pursued when others are equally good, or worse, at making choices. Fourth, even if a person would not be willing to let others choose for her, this would not demonstrate that she puts intrinsic value on her autonomy, as this unwillingness has other, and more plausible, explanations. Fifth, contrary to what the argument for autonomy presupposes, if one’s decision to let others choose for one is autonomous, it does not compromise one’s autonomy. Sixth, the reasons that proponents of the argument for autonomy present for our alleged reluctance towards letting others choose for us are incompatible with the procedural conception of autonomy that they accept.
18 I conclude that the argument for autonomy is not able to show that autonomy has intrinsic value for us.