 A strong substantive theory of autonomy was defined earlier as one in which “the contents of the preferences or values that agents can form or act on autonomously are subject to direct normative constraints” (Benson 2005a, 133). On strong substantive approaches, certain preferences and values are deemed to be incompatible with autonomy, not because of how they are formed, but rather because of their content. For example, choosing slavery or subservience would not be autonomous on a strong substantive approach because the contents of the choices would violate the normative constraints introduced by the theory. The conceptions of autonomy that employ normative competence (§5), self-regarding attitudes (§6) and dialogical features (§7) should be distinguished from those in the strong substantive category. These conceptions may “incorporate normative substance” in different ways and hence may be weakly substantive (Benson 2005a, 133). However, none of these approaches invoke direct normative constraints on the content of agents’ preferences as necessary conditions of autonomy.