"[A] wounded and unconscious victim of an accident may not take the decisions about what is to be done to him, but in so far as the doctor chooses a course which the doctor knows the patient would have preferred had he been conscious, there is no violation of the patient's freedom -- indeed, there is an affirmation of that freedom in the sense of 'effective power', if the doctor's choice is guided by what the patient would have wanted." A. Sen, THE IDEA OF JUSTICE (2009). For the bibliographically inclined, that's at p. 302, in chapter fourteen, "Equality and Liberty." Yes. I see the point, but it is bothersome. We might want to say, intuitively, that I am acting freely if a surrogate of mine (a chosen surrogate ideally) makes the decision I would have made in a time of medical crisis, when I could not have made it. In contrast, I am not free if the decision is made for me by someone who doesn't care what I would have wanted. For ex...
