ABSTRACT
Policies designed either to keep us from doing harm to ourselves or to others, or to improve our wellbeing by correcting for predictable biases in our behaviour, are justified by the idea that there is something wrong with our agency. The legitimacy of influencing our behaviour, often against our momentary, and sometimes even long-term, preferences, is based on the assumption that we would choose to act in the way intended by the paternalist, if only we were in full control of our actions and faculties. Early proponents of neuroeconomics have suggested that neuroeconomics can shed light on the neural basis of valuation and decision-making in a way which could be relevant for assessing the well-being and, by implication, autonomy of decision-makers. Can neuroscience inform us about the conditions under which we are not in sufficient control of ourselves?
In this chapter we discuss neuroscience research relevant to understanding the neural basis of self-control, motivation, and choice. Our focus is on cases of less-than-ideal agency, which do not yet amount to clearly defined pathologies but might warrant external intervention. We focus especially on the neuroscience of addiction and neuroeconomics of choice. We problematize the appropriate notion of control in this context and argue that the normative concept of personal autonomy relevant to the justification of paternalistic and coercive policies cannot be reduced to abnormalities in the neural mechanisms regulating our behaviour. We appeal to the literature on relational autonomy in arguing that autonomy is partly socially constituted and irreducibly normative.
