Hi everyone, Next Friday, the 11th of July, we have a special Anderson Seminar as part of the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series. The speaker is Niko Kolodny (UC Berkeley). The title of Niko’s talk is “Two Concepts of Consent”. Here is the abstract for the talk:
When you consent, in the sense in which I’m interested, to my X-ing—say, my performing surgery on you—you make it the case that I no longer owe you a “negative” duty not to X. And when you consent to my not X-ing—say, my not aiding you—you make it the case that I no longer owe you a “positive” duty to X. This phenomenon raises three questions. First, there is the question of “how consent works.” Why does your consenting to my X-ing, or to my not X-ing, make it the case that I no longer owe you a negative duty not to X, or a positive duty to X? Second, there is the question of “what consent is.” What must take place for you to have made it the case that I no longer owe you a negative duty not to X, or a positive duty to X, because of your consent? Third, there is the question of “what the conditions are.” What other conditions must be satisfied, and why must they be satisfied, in order for it to be the case that because you have consented, I do not wrong you by X-ing or by failing to X? This paper sketches answers to these three questions. Negatively, my answers run counter to certain widely held views, which are often what is in mind when consent is said to be the exercise of what Joseph Raz called a “normative power”. Positively, I suggest that consent works in two ways. First, your “vacating” consent to my X-ing makes it the case that I no longer owe you a duty not to X by making it the case that my X-ing no longer sets back the interest that gave rise to the duty. Second, your “non-vacating” consent to my X-ing makes it the case that I no longer owe you a duty to not to X without making it the case that my X-ing no longer sets back the interest that underlies the duty, while leaving that interest in place. These two answers to the question of how consent works suggest two different accounts of what consent is. And these two answers to the question of how consent works help to specify and explain what the conditions are. The seminar will take place between 3:00pm and 4:30pm on Friday the 11th of July in the Philosophy Seminar Room N494 in the Quadrangle. Any questions about the seminar can be directed to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Ryan Cox Associate Lecturer in Philosophy Discipline of Philosophy School of Humanities University of Sydney [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
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