A legacy unfinished: An appreciative reply to comments on self-determination theory’s frontiers and challenges.

It is an honor to receive comments from such an esteemed group of scholars, and their recognition of the progress in motivational sciences catalyzed by a global community of self-determination theory (SDT) researchers.Given limited space, we respond to only a few of their reactions.In our legacy article (Ryan et al., 2021), we focused on autonomy, in part because, as Koestner and Holding (2021) highlighted, SDT is unique in its emphasis on this concept.Koestner and Holding further suggested that SDT's emphasis on autonomy has a particular salience in this age of COVID-19 in which voluntary compliance matters to public health.We agree, and have seen SDT's ability to differentiate between autonomy and "freedom," and to identify strategies that facilitate maintained behavior change to be highly relevant in this pandemic (e.g., Martela et al., 2021; Vermote et al., 2021).Concerning this emphasis on autonomy, Sheldon and Geoffredi (2021) worried that SDT faces a "major threat" from determinists who object to "free will."Yet we suggest that sophisticated determinism is not at all a threat to SDT's organismic approach.SDT conceptualizes autonomy, not as some disembodied free will, but rather as a form of human functioning, with its own developmental foundations, biological mechanisms, phenomenology, and consequences.Thus, as Ryan et al. ( 2012) state, "popular attacks on free will and self-regulation from social psychologists should not disturb anyone who is listening carefully, because the concepts they knock down are not consistent with practical living" (p.218).In contrast, the concept of autonomy described within SDT is philosophically informed, researchable at multiple levels of analysis, and is clearly no illusion given its robust consequences for human performance and wellness (Ryan & Deci, 2006).Sheldon and Geoffredi also suggest that SDT has more often focused on social conditions affecting autonomous functioning than on the self-as-agent.We would agree, while also highlighting