  Perhaps there is no attitude to which we can point in order to distinguish between cases in which the power of an agent’s motives can be directly attributed to her and cases in which her authority over her motives is a mere formality. If so, then this might seem to be a reason to favor accounts that tie autonomous agency to the agent’s responsiveness to reasons. Unfortunately, however, these accounts have problems of their own. Most importantly, it seems as though a person can govern herself even if she does not understand the significance of what she is doing. To be sure, if someone’s ignorance is perfectly reasonable, then she may not be to blame if she does something wrong. But under such circumstances, what frees her from blame is the fact that she has good reason to be ignorant. There appears to be no basis for assuming that, in addition to lacking certain relevant information, she is not really the (ill-informed) power behind her authorization of her action.