Heteronomy, Autonomy, and Ethics
In his book, Nietzsche’s Epic of the Soul, T.K. Seung makes a distinction between what he refers to as the heteronomous and the autonomous will. The heteronomous will is the perspective by which human beings see themselves as subject to thoroughly causal, natural influences and are therefore without the ability to self-govern. It’s from this perspective that science takes off on its project to find causal explanations for the things we do and even think. The other perspective, the autonomous will, refers to the way in which a subject has the ability to shape her destiny. This perspective attends less to a scientific approach of understanding human beings, and attends more to a phenomenological understanding - that is, it attends to the way human beings experience their actions and thoughts. In relation to ethics, whereas a cognitive scientist may understand a human being’s ethical actions as they relate to the agent’s environment, situation, cognitive style, physiology, and so forth, a phenomenologist would want to look at the agent’s reasons for doing as they did, which, unless the agent is a cognitive scientist, will probably not resemble anything like a scientific causal explanation.
Seung is right to point out that the two wills, the heteronomous and the autonomous, are opposing wills. They seem to conflict with each other. Some type of synthesis seems necessary if we are not to settle on an incomplete description of human behavior. As oppositional, the heteronomous and the autonomous wills do not provide such a description in themselves. Regarding heteronomy, if we accept a materialist’s account of the world as well as a strong version of the theory of cause and effect, it’s difficult to see a way out of theorizing that, due to our growing up with particular psychological and physiological components alongside particular environmental conditions, our actions are fundamentally decided. But the idea that we are fated to be who we are and act as we do is deplorable to most people because we feel a sense of autonomy - an ability to break out of the causal chain, or a sensation that we were never in it. Our autonomous will defies the idea of fate. In Seung’s words, “The hatred of fate is the most natural response of the individual will to the world because it is bound to clash with the unlimited power of fate. As long as the individual self defiantly asserts its will against the world, it has no chance of coming to love the cosmic self,” which is the heteronomous will (Seung 353).
The opposition between the heteronomous and the autonomous wills has recently captivated the philosophical work being done in ethics. Thanks to the work of neuroscientists and experimental psychologists, serious questions have been raised about the supposed autonomy of our moral behavior. Studies suggest that we may not be in as much control over our moral actions as we once thought. This is an important subject for scientists because the relatively recent work done in cognitive science that persuasively articulates the heteronomous ethical will needs to find ground amidst the work philosophers have been doing in ethics for over 2,000 years. At the same time, the recent breakthroughs in cognitive science need to be accounted for by philosophers if their theories are not to become dogmatic. William D. Casebear notes, “As we cast about for a post-Enlightenment normative anchor, if we are to prevent backsliding into dogmatic supernatural and non-naturalistic conceptions of the moral life, it is imperative that we demonstrate the possibility of intelligent, useful interactions between the human sciences and human ethics” (Casebear 1). This paper aims to explore the heteronomous will of ethics as well as the autonomous, and offers an approach toward their synthesis. Let’s begin by discussing the heteronomous will in ethics.
The experiments being carried out in the relatively recent history of moral psychology have indicated that the ethical behavior exhibited by human beings is causally related to wildly mysterious factors. The argument posited by many studies indicates that what ultimately drives us to act morally or immorally seems irrelevant from the point of view of the agent in question. Just like the moon influences the ocean’s behavior, apparently a good-smelling fragrance influences our likelihood to offer a person change for their dollar (Appiah 41). According to a study by Robert Baron and Jill Thomley, the scent in the air influences most individuals’ willingness to make change for a dollar. According to such findings, if you need change for your dollar, your best bet is to situate yourself outside a bakery than, say, a “neutral-smelling dry-goods store”. In another study, Princeton seminary students who’d just attended a lecture on the Good Samaritan story from the Bible were less likely to help a visibly distressed person slumped in a doorway if they thought they were running late to an appointment (Appiah 41). It’s suggested that these seminarians were not necessarily bad people, nor uncaring. It seems the causal factors in the situation did not lend themselves to helping. It seems their autonomous will was not resilient.
Such findings by experimental psychologists comprise what Kwame Anthony Appiah deems “the situationist’s challenge”. They make questionable the theories developed by duty and virtue ethicists, who seem to attribute ethical behavior to rationality and context-independent dispositions. Appiah writes, “these psychologists are... ‘situationists’: they claim... that a lot of what people do is best explained not by traits of character but by systematic human tendencies to respond to features of their situations that nobody previously thought to be crucial at all” (Appiah 39). Such findings challenge assumptions made in the history of moral philosophizing because they favor heteronomy over human autonomy. They challenge us to consider what morality refers to if our everyday decisions have a grounding in a physical situation and not a free-thinking, rational decision procedure.
Marc Hauser, Liane Young, and Fiery Cushman have been rethinking the operative principles and the causal structure of our moral actions. By making an analogy with Noam Chomsky’s “Language Faculty,” they argue that “(A)ll humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions” (Hauser e.t. 107). They argue that, much like humans are endowed with a language faculty, which refers to the idea that “human knowledge of language must be guided in part by an innate faculty of the mind - the faculty of language,” so too must they be endowed with a “mental organ” that produces moral judgments. This “mental organ” is not physical like a heart, but it draws from the many physical components of the human make-up, such as a human’s memory system, which is necessary in the outputting of moral judgments. It then perceives events and analyzes them in terms of component features such as intention, agent, recipient, and harm, and it cognizes a scenario and outputs a judgment. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this theory is that the outputted judgment comes prior to feeling emotion and prior to conscious critical reasoning. Thus, according to Hauser, e.t., when the Princeton seminarians passed by the distressed person on the side of the road as they hurried off to their appointments, their moral faculty analyzed the event automatically (or, unconsciously) in terms of their commitments, the distressed person’s well-being, and the importance of both, and most made a judgment to move along. Their feeling bad and their rational commitment (or non-commitment) to the Good Samaritan’s model came after such a decision was made. This model was created in light of studies carried out by experimental psychologists and philosophers. It suggests that our biology tells us more about our moral life than does our free will.
The theory makes the claim that the traditional models of moral judgment are incorrect, or at least highly suspect. Traditional models state that we perceive an event, we feel emotions and/or we reason, and then we make a judgment. Traditional models all assume a sense of autonomy - that we are free agents who determine, in one way or another, our moral judgments and actions, and are thereby responsible for those judgments and actions. It stands out as one theory among others that warrants a “situation” with moral judgment and action, not an agent’s free-will.
Of course, this tells only part of the story. Pertaining to ethics, we must recognize that these studies can’t provide the whole story of our moral lives. For one thing, it doesn’t do justice to the phenomenological characteristics of acting morally. As Appiah says, “(A)sk people why they do something and they’ll expect that you want not a causal explanation of what they did, but their reason for doing it - that is, what it was about the choice that made it seem a good thing to do” (Appiah 43). It should be noted that the situationist’s research focuses primarily on the majorities. Studies in moral psychology don’t tell us much at all about the 10% of Princeton seminarians who, despite being late for their appointment, did stop and help. Appiah comments, “perhaps that subpopulation really did have a stable tendency to be helpful” (Appiah 49). That is, perhaps there are times in which the traditional models of moral judgment and action tell the more persuasive story of our moral lives. Perhaps one’s character or ethical reasoning, adequately developed over time, can trump a situation’s influence. Of course, Appiah also notes, “or, for all we know, (the seminarians were) heedless of time and careless about appointments” (49-50). The point is that work in moral philosophy still seems important. It’s unsatisfactory to attribute all developments in moral thinking to a mere situation. We can take a note from Husserl on this issue - that the physical sciences will reveal certain phenomena, but they will also conceal certain phenomena. What seems indubitable is that moral philosophy cannot ignore the work being done in experimental moral psychology. The future project of ethics will be to take account of the research being done in psychology while also taking into account the phenomenology of our moral lives. We cannot afford to treat the two as unrelated. We need to carve out a program for their integration.
Just what kind of a program this will be remains an open problem in modern moral philosophy. It might be valuable for westerners to study Buddhist ethics to help rethink an approach. Buddhist philosophy is generally grounded in theories of cause and effect. In describing sentient life, Buddhists will refer to the Padicca-Samuppada, or the “Chain of Causation,” which describes twelve causal states of individual consciousness, each one determining the next. The first state is ignorance and it is the first of a chain of causation. From ignorance arises activities. These activities can be either moral or immoral and the agent performs them in ignorance, and so does not consider them in light of rationality or moral theory. Still, these acts will be causes of future unfoldings of self-consciousness. Arising from such activities is what Buddhists refer to as “rebirth-consciousness”. Roughly, it is an awareness of the past, and therefore refers to time as it’s linearly experienced. This causes a sense of body and mind to take shape. With the body and mind, we become aware of our senses. We could say that at this point the aestheses arise and make contact with an external world. Such contact leads to feeling - whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. All these states described arise naturally and, importantly, passively. They are effects of prior mental/physical events. Our robust sense of autonomy comes as the next link in the causal chain, although, as noted, this sense of autonomy is itself conditioned by prior causes. We start to crave the satisfaction of pleasant feelings and the avoidance of unpleasant feelings. We, for instance, enjoy the feeling of tasting chocolate. This feeling causes in us a craving for more chocolate. This craving causes a grasping, and Buddhists identify this act of grasping as the source of human suffering. We crave chocolate and so we grasp at it, mentally and/or physically. We become attached to the satisfaction of our craving for chocolate. Such grasping is also part of a causal chain, and so conditions the way by which we then engage with the world. A cognitive psychologist would find resonance in this idea because our grasping or clinging can effectively shape our cognitive styles of thinking and experiencing the world. Cognitive style refers to “a recurring pattern of perceptual and intellectual activity” (Lavenda). Significant work has already been done to show that a person’s cognitive style is in part causally determined. One’s going to school, for instance, can affect the range of cognitive styles employed in various tasks (Lavenda). That is to say, one’s experiences affect the variety of cognitive styles employed for different tasks. There seems to be a commonality that can be drawn here between these scientific studies and the Buddhist insight that grasping essentially conditions and causes future mental states. The final link in the chain of causation is old age and death. We can think of this “old age” and “death” as unwholesome mental states such as despair, lamentation, and grief. That is to say, cognitive styles conditioned by craving and grasping will themselves cause mental anguish (all this, see Williams 71).
The importance of the Padicca-Samuppada, in light of our discussion on ethics, is that it grounds human activity in a rich causal theory. However, the Buddhist concept of cause and effect is not to be understood according to linear causality, which refers to a one-way relationship between a cause and an effect (such as the following example is to be understood: cue ball A is struck by B, thus leading it to strike C which goes into the corner pocket). It should rather lay the groundwork for a type of compatibilism, where causal determination exists in the form of conditions that effectively shape mental and physical states. Should certain conditions be present, certain mental and physical states will naturally follow. However, through the act of mindfulness, or a conscious sifting through such conditions and a bringing to rise certain conditioning factors rather than others, these mental and physical states won’t necessarily follow. For this reason, the Buddhist causal theory can not be considered to involve a one-to-one relationship between causes and effects, but rather a mutual causality in which causes and effects are co-present and effectively influence each other. There is therefore a degree to which, in Buddhist ethics, the heteronomous and the autonomous will can be said to co-exist. While we are not in control of the conditioning factors (the causes) that shape our present experience, these conditioning factors are multiple, and we do have control, through mindfulness, to bring rise to healthy conditioning factors over unhealthy conditioning factors. Thus causes and effects are co-present, and they influence each other.
Let’s now deepen our analysis of how exactly this is possible. Buddhist ethics is woven within the Noble Eightfold Path, known as the magga, which outlines a way by which we can, through effort, attain freedom from unwholesome mental states. The magga includes eight interdependent steps, which are mutually supportive and followed simultaneously, that should (hopefully) aid in a subject’s release from unhealthy mental states as they are conditioned via the Paddica-Samupada. The first two are related to wisdom - that is, understanding the root causes of unwholesome mental states. In relation to this discussion, these two steps, “Right View” and “Right Thought” refer to a respect for the Padicca-Samuppada, and thereby the heteronomous will. The following three steps, “Right speech”, “Right Action”, and “Right Livelihood”, ground Buddhist morality. Phra Rajavaramuni notes that “Buddhist ethics is rooted in knowledge and effort based on knowledge” (knowledge of the “impermanent, conflicting, and not-self nature of things, and the dependent origination of all phenomena, that is, that all changes are subject to causes and conditions”), “not accidentalism or fatalism” (47). The last three steps, “Right effort”, “Right mindfulness”, and “Right concentration” refer to mental discipline. These steps, which involve the various meditation practices developed over thousands of years, effectively promote a state of mindfulness, thus developing one’s ability to bring rise to certain conditioning factors rather than others. All eight steps are incredibly important in Buddhist ethics, because they clear the space and methodology by which we can affect the causal chain and bring rise to healthy mental states as well as wholesome moral action.
Preceding the magga are two prerequisites, known as the pre-magga factors, “which indicate the conditions for the arising and the support for the development of all the magga factors” (Rajavaramuni 47). They include “Association with good people,” and “Systematic attention or reflection” (47). Rajavaramuni notes, “The two pre-magga factors... deal with the influence and effect the world and society can have on the individual. They stress what one can get from one’s environment, natural and social, through one’s dealing and relations with it” (47). The lesson to be learned here is that, so long as we accept a compatibilist causal theory, we admit that we have a certain amount of autonomy with regard to the kind of community we can become involved in and also co-create, which will help to bring rise to healthy conditioning factors. If the situationist is correct, our only chance to autonomously promote wholesome moral judgments and actions is by altering our situation. We can work to surround ourselves with “good people” and we can also develop mental attention and stability using techniques developed by Buddhist contemplatives, which would alter our cognitive styles, which in turn would alter the situation. In this way, we might find Buddhist ethics to be a source of inspiration to westerners struggling to relate the heteronomous and the autonomous will. The seminarians would have certainly been more likely to help the distressed person if they weren’t grasping at being on time to the appointment they were hurrying off to. Studying Buddhist philosophy could assist in relieving such craving, thereby altering the situation itself which, according to situationists, was at the root of the immoral action of leaving behind a person in need in order to be on time to an appointment.
I hope to have shown that if we are to synthesize the heteronomous and autonomous ethical wills, we will have to approach it such as I’m suggesting here - in affecting the situation itself, in virtue of the physical environment and also the cognitive styles employed by an agent. Buddhist ethics, with its grounding in a rich theory of cause and effect, and also its rich grounding in approaching ethics through wisdom, can provide valuable insight as to the methods by which we might do so.
Works Cited
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Experiments in Ethics. Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Casebear, William D. Natural Ethical Facts; Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.
Hauser, Marc, Liane Young, and Fiery Cushman. “Reviving Rawls’s Linguistic Analogy: Operative Principles and the Causal Structure of Moral Actions”. Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity. Ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. MIT Press, 2008.
Lavenda, Robert H. and Emily Schultz. “Cognitive Style.” Oxford University Press, Higher Education Group. <http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/ 9780195189766/student_resources/Supp_chap_mats/Chap10/ Cognitive_Style/? view=usa>.
Rajavaramuni, Phra. “Foundations of Buddhist Social Ethics.” Ethics, Wealth, and Salvation, A Study in Buddhist Social Ethics. Ed. Russell Sizemore & Donald Swearer. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina, 1990.
Seung, T.K. Nietzsche’s Epic of the Soul, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005.
Williams, Paul and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought, A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. New York: Routledge, 2000.
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