Consent, Uptake, and Wronging

The power of consent enables one person to give another person a moral permission by releasing them from a duty. The examples of consent to sex, surgery, and the sharing of property are familiar. This article considers whether consent requires uptake from the consent-receiver if they are to acquire this moral permission. Most philosophers writing about the ethics of consent suggest that uptake is not necessary. This article argues, by contrast, that we should endorse an uptake condition for consent-based permissions. It does so by locating an uptake condition within a general account of wronging and its interpersonal significance. On the view defended, consent-sensitive duties should be interpreted as requiring a consent-receiver to treat consent as a deliberative constraint on action. On this view, if a consent-receiver acts without recognizing that consent has been given, they violate the consent-sensitive duty they owe to the consent-giver.