2. a conception of autonomy which excludes factors such as loyalty and love severs ethics from its foundation in human experience. Substantive independence requires that our decisions and actions are entirely our own. Clearly this ideal is impossible, since we speak and think using socially-acquired linguistic signs, laden with the values of our intellectual ancestors. Our personal aims are even more prone to the influence of others, as they generally derive largely from our membership in one social group or another. Even automatic, unthinking actions are to a degree socially-conditioned, as Pavlov and Skinner have demonstrated.
Substantive independence is incompatible with the experience of being human.
Most contemporary ethicists believe that ethics aims at human flourishing and that human knowledge must be sought in human experience. This position does not imply we are all secular humanists - most theologians hold that God is manifest in human experience, including divine revelation. But it does imply that any justifiable ethical principle of autonomy will reflect the manner in which thriving human beings actually behave. One of the universally-recognized aspects of such human ethical experience is that it manifests the aforementioned attributes of loyalty, love and compassion. As Aristotle observed, the human being is a social animal.