ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 an account of autonomy was developed and defended-“practical autonomy”—that captured the connotative contours of this concept as it is used in contemporary philosophical discussion. With this account in hand, it was argued in Chapter 2 that there was good reason to adopt this account of practical autonomy as a (if not the) core account of this concept, since there were fewer faces of autonomy than it might, at fi rst, appear. Then, in Chapter 3, it was argued that the concepts of autonomy and identifi cation are distinct, with the former, and not the latter, being that which enjoys prominence in contemporary bioethics. Given the arguments of these three chapters, then, it might appear that a discussion of the metaphysical question of the conditions that must be met for a person to identify with her effective fi rst-order desires would be out of place in a volume devoted to developing an account of autonomy for use in contemporary moral philosophy, in general, and bioethics, in particular. But this appearance is misleading, for two reasons. First, for the arguments in the previous chapter to be fully convincing, an account of identifi cation must be provided to show that autonomy and identifi cation really are distinct concepts-and that it is the former, and not the latter, that is the dominant concept of contemporary bioethics. Second (and relatedly) as was noted in both Chapters 2 and 3 the concept of identifi cation is often confl ated with that of autonomy. Offering an analysis of identifi cation would thus be useful for bioethicists, insofar as this would underscore the point that this is a metaphysical concept, and not a political one-and thus not one that is immediately germane to many of their discussions.
