The word a person uses when she thinks about their own actions and thoughts.
Autonomy is one of the most common ways people think about their own actions and thoughts, but what is it actually? The problem is, as with many other complex concepts, the word is often used incorrectly. Autonomy isn’t the same thing as self-awareness. Self-awareness is what a person is aware of their own actions and thoughts in the moment.
I think many people still confuse it with self-awareness. A person who thinks they have autonomy over their actions and thoughts isnt self-aware. The reason why you cant just do anything in the moment is because the moment is just as important as the action or thought itself. The moment is everything.
It’s important to realize that what we think we are able to do in the moment is often based on our prior habits, routines, and habits of responding to what we see or hear. For example, a person with a high-level of self-awareness might be able to make a decision about something right in the moment, but not realize or acknowledge that they made the wrong decision. The moment is the place where action and thought meet.
As we mentioned earlier, people with much self-awareness can be very powerful. They can anticipate what they need to do or be, and how to get to the place they want to be in the moment. They’re often able to influence the actions of others in the moment, and they can make their voice heard.
We think that people with self-awareness can make decisions in the moment, but they are often not aware enough to recognize when their decisions were wrong. As a result, they can then make the wrong decision in the moment. This is a flaw in our thinking because it makes us think about choices in the wrong light. We need to think about decisions in the moment in a way that allows us to recognize when we are wrong.
Think about it. If you’re on a boat for an hour and have no destination, you’re not considering destinations until you pass another vessel. If you’re driving in a car and there’s no destination, you’re not considering destinations until you pass another car. The same applies for our minds and actions. We tend to think about our decisions to be the best, so they will be the most impactful, but that can result in us making the wrong decision in the moment.
The whole concept of autonomy has been debated for centuries. For me, it was when I was studying philosophy. I studied the Aristotelians, and they thought that we are all automatons, but they were really wrong about that. In their view, we had free will and that meant we could chose to be good or bad, right or wrong. We have no choice in our lives, and that means we have no sense of autonomy.
Autonomy is a really slippery concept. We all have a sense of freedom, but no one has ever told us to feel that way or defined what that freedom means. When the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote his 1790 essay “What is free?”, he basically threw out the idea of choice and defined autonomy as the absence of will. He went on to argue that it was possible to have a will, and that the only way to be free is to be a doer.
No, you’re literally just not free. You have no choice, and you’re completely dependent on others to choose your path. Even when we are perfectly autonomous, we still have people at the controls. Even if we have perfect knowledge of all the rules, we still have people at the controls.