2023/04/06 by David Enoch · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Free Will and Agency #Legal principles and applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.3998/phimp.3169
openalex publication_date 2023/04/06 · openalex created_date 2023/04/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
If Badguy threatens Goodguy with harm, and Goodguy consents to giving his money to Badguy (to avoid the harm), Goodguy’s consent is invalid because coerced. But if under Badguy’s coercive threat Goodguy proceeds to consent to paying someone else (or to hiring a bodyguard), the consent may very well be valid. The challenge is to explain this difference. In this paper I argue that the way forward is to recognize that the content of consent is contrastive – one doesn’t just agree to giving the money; rather, one consents to giving-the-money-rather-than-some-alternative. And then the normative upshot of the relevant consent depends on what the morally relevant contrast is, which in turn depends on who is (before the relevant interaction) entitled to what against whom. We have, I think, independent reasons to understand consent contrastively, and once we do, we can solve the puzzle of third party coercion with ease.