Presupposition and Consent

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 6 (4):1–32 (2020)
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Abstract

I argue that “consent” language presupposes that the contemplated action is or would be at someone else’s behest. When one does something for another reason—for example, when one elects independently to do something, or when one accepts an invitation to do something—it is linguistically inappropriate to describe the actor as “consenting” to it; but it is also inappropriate to describe them as “not consenting” to it. A consequence of this idea is that “consent” is poorly suited to play its canonical central role in contemporary sexual ethics. But this does not mean that nonconsensual sex can be morally permissible. Consent language, I’ll suggest, carries the conventional presupposition that that which is or might be consented to is at someone else’s behest. One implication will be a new kind of support for feminist critiques of consent theory in sexual ethics.

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Jonathan Ichikawa
University of British Columbia

Citations of this work

Wronging Oneself.Daniel Muñoz & Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt - 2024 - Journal of Philosophy 121 (4):181-207.
A Phenomenological Approach to Sexual Consent.Ellie Anderson - 2022 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 8 (2).
Sexual Autonomy and Sexual Consent.Shaun Miller - 2022 - In David Boonin (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 247-270.

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References found in this work

Logic and Conversation.H. Paul Grice - 2013 - In Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy. Peterborough, CA: Broadview Press. pp. 47.
Logic and Conversation.H. Paul Grice - 1975 - In Donald Davidson (ed.), The logic of grammar. Encino, Calif.: Dickenson Pub. Co.. pp. 64-75.
Logic and Conversation.H. Paul Grice - 1989 - In Herbert Paul Grice (ed.), Studies in the way of words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 22-40.
Sex, Lies, and Consent.Tom Dougherty - 2013 - Ethics 123 (4):717-744.

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