The argument in chapter 9 for externalism about psychological autonomy provides
a partial answer to the focal question of part II of this book, the question what we can
add to an ideally self-controlled, mentally healthy person to yield an autonomous
person. ¹ One worry is that values and other pro-attitudes on the basis of which a self-
controlled person makes self-assessments, practical judgments, and the like might
be attitudes that he is compelled to have. Bestowing what I have called "authentic-
ity" on an agent helps with that problem: authentic agents have no "compelled^*" pro-
attitudes. ² However, other problems remain. Those deriving specifically from
incompatibilist worries are set aside in this chapter and taken up in the next.

In this chapter, as in chapter 9, I take no stand on the truth or falsity of determin-
ism. Properly speaking, an account of autonomy that is presented as being neutral on
this question is presented as being a compatibilist account. An account of autonomy
that is correct whether or not determinism is true is correct even if determinism is
true, and any such account is compatibilist. Here, again, I assume compatibilism while
trying not to be heavy-handed about that assumption. I will examine a collection of
obstacles to the autonomy of an ideally self-controlled person, with a view to locat-
ing sufficient conditions for compatibilist autonomy.

Full-blown, deliberative, intentional action, as I explained in chapter 1, involves some
psychological basis for evaluative reasoning (e.g., values, desires, and beliefs); an
evaluative judgment that is made on the basis of such reasoning and recommends a
particular course of action; an intention formed or acquired on the basis of that judg-
ment; and an action executing that intention. Starting at the bottom, we can see where
the hard questions about autonomy lie.

Imagine that S's proximal intention to A issues smoothly in his intentionally
A-ing. If the intention is autonomously possessed, the action is autonomously per-
formed. For example, if Al autonomously intends to vote for the Democratic presi-
dential candidate now and that intention unproblematically issues in his intention-
ally voting for that candidate now, then he autonomously votes for the Democratic
candidate now.

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