2017/09/22 by David Enoch · 4 citations
Health Professions · Neuroscience · #Ethics in medical practice #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Free Will and Agency
paper · doi:10.1086/692939
Hypothetical consent is puzzling. On the one hand, it seems to make a moral difference across a wide range of cases. On the other hand, there seem to be principled reasons to think that it cannot. In this article I put forward reasonably precise formulations of these general suspicions regarding hypothetical consent; I draw several distinctions regarding the ways in which hypothetical consent may make a moral difference; I distinguish between two autonomy-related concerns, nonalienation and sovereignty; and, utilizing these distinctions, I show that—and in a preliminary way, when—the objections to the moral significance of hypothetical consent fail.