Sentence examples for capacity for autonomy from inspiring English sources

We need to believe we have autonomy – or at least the capacity for autonomy – even if all the evidence points towards our helplessness.

He argues that human beings are ends in themselves, never to be used by anyone merely as a means, and that universal and unconditional obligations must be understood as an expression of the human capacity for autonomy and self-governance.

As a thinker who insisted that human beings shape culture that in turn shapes them, however, Geertz would quite likely have been unhappy to see Bellah become so immersed in cognitive science, evolutionary psychology and other disciplines that often give short shrift to the human capacity for autonomy.

Similarly, social and historical conditions (such as oppressive gender socialization) may promote or impede the capacity for autonomy (e.g., Meyers 1989).

The versions of the threshold view that see the capacity for autonomy as the relevant threshold can be challenged by approaches that cast the requirements of the capacity for autonomy as being so minimal that any individual capable of generating independent interests in his deteriorated state counts as autonomous.

Ronald Dworkin's influential work defends the capacity for autonomy as the relevant threshold, with autonomy interpreted as "the ability to act out of genuine preference or character or conviction or a sense of self" (Dworkin 1993, 225).

The hard cases are hard because they suggest that gender norms and oppressive conditions, in addition to factors such as cognitive impairment or direct coercion, potentially undermine or erode agents' capacities for autonomy.

Stressing the clinical and ethical significance of an assumed capacity for creative autonomy in individuals, this paper grounds itself in a fundamental concern for the sociopolitical dimensions of the consciousness debates.

A utilitarian might argue that it is sentience rather than the capacity for rational autonomy that is the ground of moral recognition respect, and so would regard mentally incapacitated humans and nonhuman animals as having moral standing and so as worthy of at least some moral respect in themselves.

It lays the foundation for the social network, which promotes growth of the capacity for experimentation, autonomy and acquiring independence during adolescence and young adulthood so that the child can respond actively to life's challenges [ 59].

Although older children and young adolescents demonstrate growing capacity and desire for autonomy, longitudinal research indicates that youth perceive fewer opportunities to exercise autonomy and participate in making decisions and rules in junior high than they did in elementary schools (Midgley and Feldlaufer 1987).