Autonomy

The evaluative machinery being online: the human's capacity to select from options, evaluate their situation, govern which desires become effective, and revise commitments. Autonomy is picking: selecting from options that exist. It is the precondition for agency but not the same thing.

The architecture directly targets autonomy maintenance because that is where the neuroscience gives us mechanisms. Agency -- the generative act of originating what matters -- is what the human does with intact autonomy.

Nearest academic equivalents

• Autonomy (Frankfurt 1971; Bratman 2007)
• Autonomy need (SDT)
• Moral autonomy (Kant)

Delta from academic usage

Operationalized as a measurable state variable (availability of reflective self-governance), not a right or a trait. Frankfurt's "freedom of the will" -- the capacity for second-order volitions to govern which first-order desires become effective -- provides the philosophical structure. The architecture monitors whether that capacity is online.

Distinguished from agency: autonomy is evaluative/selective; agency is generative/originating. The system maintains autonomy; the human exercises agency.