The concept of autonomy commonly used in the medical ethics literature and practice is inadequate for three reasons: it does not properly identify non-autonomous actions and choices, it provides a false explanation of which characteristics of actions and choices make them autonomous or non-autonomous, and it does not provide a basis for the moral requirement to respect autonomy. In this article, I present a more adequate framework for thinking about autonomy, but this framework does not lend itself to the practical application adopted in medical ethics. A general problem therefore arises: the concept of autonomy used in medical ethics is conceptually inadequate, but conceptually adequate concepts of autonomy do not have practical applications, which are the main focus of medical ethics. Therefore, a revision of both the view of autonomy and the practice of 'respecting autonomy' is needed.
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