Phenomenology
Is autonomy only a cognitive capacity test?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
English capacity law treats autonomy as understanding, retaining, using and weighing information; phenomenology adds bodily and affective engagement as part of autonomous deciding.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Deciding is embodied and partly passive, not only a cognitive calculation.
English capacity law's cognitive test is argued to be too thin: bodily and affective engagement belong to autonomous deciding. A Ricoeurian reading of one widow's end-of-life choices adds that choosing has a passive side, hesitation can be wisdom, and responsibility is shared when another person must act on a directive — suggesting 'wishes' rather than 'directives'.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
The capacity paper wants bodily engagement built into assessments of autonomous decisions, while the Ricoeurian paper cautions that anticipatory choices are inherently ambivalent and partly passive — which sits uneasily with any test demanding a settled, clear decision.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Applied to autonomy, the method adds bodily and affective engagement to the deliberative picture. One paper argues that the Mental Capacity Act's understand-retain-use-weigh test omits affective and bodily intentional capacities that are necessary components of autonomy, not extras; another argues that Beauchamp and Childress's account of autonomy as a property of decisions is too thin for end-of-life care, where decisions are better understood relationally and in clinical context.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Across the set, the output is an argument rather than a dataset. The papers describe themselves as essays, reconstructions or legal-philosophical analyses; none produces a clinical score, a cohort or a trial, and several say so explicitly in their limits.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
How much non-philosophical material to bring in. Mehling and colleagues supplement conceptual analysis with interviews of leading practitioners; the pain, health and autonomy papers work from the philosophical tradition alone. The interview-backed paper still cannot show that enhancing awareness causes clinical benefit, so the extra material widens the description without turning it into a test.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
The capacity paper wants bodily engagement built into assessments of autonomous decisions, while the Ricoeurian paper cautions that anticipatory choices are inherently ambivalent and partly passive — which sits uneasily with any test demanding a settled, clear decision.
How much non-philosophical material to bring in. Mehling and colleagues supplement conceptual analysis with interviews of leading practitioners; the pain, health and autonomy papers work from the philosophical tradition alone. The interview-backed paper still cannot show that enhancing awareness causes clinical benefit, so the extra material widens the description without turning it into a test.
- Supports · What do mind-body therapies share?
- Supports · Why isn’t chronic pain just tissue damage?
History
When this study was placed
Dated entries from the concept change log — when this paper was added or removed as support, challenge, or qualifier on a claim.
Placed as supporting evidence on Phenomenology
The capacity paper wants bodily engagement built into assessments of autonomous decisions, while the Ricoeurian paper cautions that anticipatory choices are inherently ambivalent and partly passive — which sits uneasily with any test demanding a settled, clear decision.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Phenomenological critique of English capacity-law autonomy as purely cognitive information-handling
- N
- Philosophical/legal-phenomenological analysis; not an empirical sample
- Population
- Informed consent and Mental Capacity Act decision-making standards
- Outcome
- Bodily and affective engagement as part of autonomous deciding beyond MCA cognitive tests
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
Is autonomy only a cognitive capacity test?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Standard legal mechanism?
informed consent is the standard mechanism through which a patient establishes the boundaries of her sovereignty (Archard ; Walker ; Lewis ). However, the
Who gets solo consent?
adult patients who are presumed to fulfil the demands of mental capacity. As Wayne Martin and Ryan Hickerson (2013) observe, capacity assessments in recent
Key findings
When patients fail deliberative competence tests, interference is more readily justified. The paper argues affective and bodily intentional capacities are necessary components of the capacity for autonomy, not extras. Layer-cake readings that split pre-predicative coping from propositional thought are discussed in the notes.
Methodology
The authors start from informed consent and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 test, then reject an introspective picture of phenomenology. Drawing on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, they take the phenomenological reduction as suspending the natural attitude so meaning shows up in practical, bodily, affective coping.
Limitations
This is legal-philosophical, not a new capacity instrument. It does not rewrite the MCA. Illness as unhomelike is cited via Svenaeus, not newly measured.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.