If we are entitled to choose on our own behalf or on our children's behalf only when we are deemed rational, and rationality is defined to mean a consensus with the authorities, then autonomy is a bad joke.
It purports to be objective and rational yet it builds in so many assumptions that it leads inevitably to the conclusion that animal experiments are necessary.
You're a rational person with an instinct for self-preservation.
"I know the argument that you persuade Auntie Doris to take her life because then you inherit the money, but you've got to have two doctors to certify that you are mentally competent and you are making a rational, well-informed decision on your own, without persuasion," he says.
By not understanding the likely levels of immigration we risk increasing the poisonous rhetoric and prejudice which leads to the destruction of all rational debate.
The plagues are strikingly recreated from a visual effects point of view, but one of Rameses' cronies pops up to provide boring rational explanations for them; and the Red Sea just sort of goes away of its own accord.
Not since the "great big new tax on everything" line mowed down reasonable discussion about alternative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has a political party so gratuitously abandoned rational policy development in the interests of a sledgehammer slogan.
The rational, autonomous, self-aware agent acting in his own self-interest according to static preferences has faded as we realise that behaviour is largely irrational, unconscious and driven by external contexts.
If the initial reason for doing the film was rational, it quickly became emotional: an opportunity to download, unwind and confess at the end of a hard, hard day.
But the judge said said that "a rational system of law ought to provide a readily understandable means of reconciling the competing claims of the conservation of species of birds with those of a facility for the development, manufacture and testing of military aircraft... or determining which should have priority".
The British ambassador to Romania was asked to attend a meeting on Friday in Bucharest with the minister for Romanians abroad, Cristian David, at which the importance of discussing immigration in a "balanced and rational way" was debated.
