  Second, on a view like Dworkin's, the past critical interests of an individual who formerly possessed the capacity for autonomy are, in a crucial sense, still her interests in the present, even if she can no longer take an interest in them. This is an essential element of the claim that the patient's earlier autonomous self has authority over her current non-autonomous self. The thought is this. For any person, the interests she has autonomously defined for herself are her most important interests. And this is so even for an individual who has lost her capacity for autonomy or her personhood: so long as the individual survives the loss as numerically the same entity, her interests stemming from autonomy (or the subset of them that can still be satisfied) remain her most important interests, even if she can't espouse them now, and they are, in this sense, “past.” Thus, Dworkin offers a powerful rationale for why satisfying “past” interests can still matter, and matter very deeply, in the present.