ABSTRACT
Thus far in this volume an account of practical autonomy has been developed and defended (in Chapter 1), and, with this in hand, it was established in Chapter 2 that the concept of autonomy is not as hydra-headed as it might at fi rst appear. It was then argued in Chapter 3 that autonomy and identifi cation are distinct concepts, which laid the groundwork for the development (in Chapter 4) of an account of decisive identifi cation. With this theoretical background in place it is time now to turn to develop further this account of practical autonomy through showing how a person’s autonomy is affected by an increase in the number of options from which she has to choose and how it is affected by her being subject to constraints. These discussions of the effects that increased choice and constraint have upon the autonomy of those faced with, or subjected to, them will not, however, be merely theoretically orientated. Instead, they will be developed so that they illuminate not only the theory of practical autonomy that is the focus of this volume but also those debates in biomedical ethics that turn on the relationships that hold between autonomy, choice, and constraint.
