  For some authors, however, the role of our normative commitments in  this debate is much stronger: they may actually authoritatively  constrain, shape, or even be immune or irrelevant to one's theory of  personal identity. This is a general methodological dispute about the proper direction of argumentation in the arena of personal identity  and ethics. The assumption of many working in this arena has been  evident in the discussion thus far: we work out or identify the  correct theory of personal identity and then apply it where needed to the world of ethics. What we will briefly explore in this section,  though, are four importantly different approaches (these are not  exhaustive of the alternatives, however).