Philosophy Colloquium: "Flawed Consent."

Date
Mar 2, 2018, 4:00 pm6:00 pm
Location
Robertson Hall Bowl 16 WWS

Speaker

Details

Event Description

ABSTRACT:  How can coercion or pressure undermine someone's sexual consent? The standard view is that while valid consent releases another person from a duty, serious threats would invalidate someone's consent, with the result that it has no normative effect at all. I argue that to capture all the ways in which sexual consent can be undermined, we need to refine the standard view by introducing a middle category of "flawed consent." Consent can be flawed to varying degrees; when it is flawed, consent does not remove a duty altogether, but instead downgrades the stringency of the obligation.