Mistreating Consent

Consent plays an important role in our lives. Using someone’s body or property without their consent is typically a serious wrong. However, there are various ways in which consensual interactions may be morally deficient. This paper articulates an underexplored way in which consent can be defective, namely by being moot. Moot consent occurs when others would act regardless of our consent. (Imagine Audrey consents to have sex with Brice, but if she hadn’t consented, he would have had sex with her anyway.) These cases are disturbing, but it is difficult to explain why whilst preserving morally relevant distinctions among cases. On my view, moot consent is still valid consent, but the consent-receiver wrongs the agent by mistreating the consent: consent fails to play a proper role in the consent-receiver’s practical deliberation and reasons for action. Cases of moot consent underscore that we care not just about the presence of consent, but also about the role it plays in others’ reasoning.