Before we can design medical decision procedures which adequately balance patient autonomy against broader well-being and social concerns, we must first understand what autonomy is and why it is important. An adequate conception of autonomy ought to be both theoretically sound and pragmatically useful. I propose an expanded and clarified individualistic conception of autonomy for use in bioethics that provides action-guidance in regard to obtaining genuinely informed consent and which can avoid many of the pitfalls which face more revisionary notions of autonomy.
Department of Philosophy, Skinner Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7505
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