ABSTRACT
A taxonomy organizes things into categories. The aim of this chapter is to elucidate what a taxonomy that distinguishes between the normative and the descriptive domain can and should be expected to do in the context of the autonomy debate. Formal and methodological considerations show that far from being a mere starting point, the descriptive-normative distinction is essential to the debate. There are, of course, many ways to cut the cake, and the distinction does not presuppose that there is a unique privileged way to draw a line between the normative and the descriptive domain. To begin with, the chapter sets out which things are supposed to be classified and it specifies the relevant kind of categories (Section ‘Preliminaries’). Thereafter, it introduces five desiderata for a taxonomy that serve as a basis for the discussion in forthcoming chapters (Section ‘Taxonomic Desiderata’). Finally, it defends a formal and a methodological constraint on a taxonomy in the context of the autonomy debate and discusses their far-reaching consequences (Sections ‘Non-Triviality Constraint’ and ‘Impartiality Constraint’).
