Abstract
It has been suggested that, in addition to individual level decision-making, informed consent procedures could be used in collective decision-making too. One of the main criticisms directed at this suggestion concerns decision-making power. It is maintained that consent is a veto power concept and that, as such, it is not appropriate for collective decision-making. This paper examines this objection to collective informed consent. It argues that veto power informed consent can have some uses in the collective level and that when it is not appropriate the decision power a concerned party ought to have in connection with an arrangement should be made relative to the interest she has at stake in it. It concludes that the objection examined does not undermine collective informed consent.
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Notes
For the sake of simplicity, I now refer to persons only. That is not to say that only persons would be morally relevant beings.
Some desperate circumstances such as wars and natural disasters could make a difference here. Whether they would depends, among other things, on how much weight one’s moral claim to one’s life should be taken to have as compared with the moral claim others could have on one’s life. That problem is touched on below.
I briefly return to some other possible ways of determining the moral weight of persons’ interests below.
This classification adapts from von Hirsh and Järeborg’s [16] ideas of how to gauge criminal harm.
This notion of ‘need’ is thus not coextensive with what in ordinary language is referred to with such expressions as human needs or the basic needs of a person.
Other things equal, it would be counter-intuitive to maintain, for example, that one has veto to the use of a piece of land one owns when the land is of no significance to one and using it is the only way in which some other persons could survive.
Someone might maintain that one owns one’s self and that gives one veto power to any arrangement that makes use of or trespasses on one’s self. However, if ownership of self implied a moral entitlement to veto all such arrangements, a person could have a moral duty to do something only if she herself wanted to do it. As even those persons who do not want to be moral can have moral duties, that is counter-intuitive. For criticism of the view that we own ourselves see, e.g., Attas [18].
This, of course, does not rule out supererogatory action. Even though a person’s moral claim to something was stronger than that of others, other things equal, she can still decide to sacrifice herself or her possessions for others.
Someone might object that adopting such a practice of compensation might be too costly to be efficient even if it were not abused and that some people would be likely to take the compensation they could have but still utilize the arrangement or its results like others. I cannot answer the empirical questions about likelihood of abuse and efficiency. It is however arguable that efficiency should not come before moral acceptability (cf., e.g., [20]), and the possibility of compensation abuse would seem to concern all decision-making methods that grant compensation for infringements of peoples’ interests. And those methods that do not grant such compensation can be criticized for violating individuals’ interests without giving recompense.
I do not claim that the differences in the values of upward and downward transitions are always as dramatic and clear as suggested by these numerical values. The numerical values given above are only meant to be illustrative of the calculations collective informed consent would involve.
Someone might maintain that, in addition to these notions, when an effect is of moral relevance could also be determined in terms of concepts like quality of life, happiness, welfare, etc. I am unable to examine the implications of defining moral relevance in terms of such notions here. But they are arguably similar to those of health, wellbeing, and needs so that the definitions of moral relevance referring to them face the problem that defining moral relevance in terms of health, wellbeing, or needs is shown to face below. I will address this question in more detail elsewhere.
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Varelius, J. Collective Informed Consent and Decision Power. Sci Eng Ethics 15, 39–50 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-008-9080-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-008-9080-7