Consent determines ethics

I want to sketch out an idea that hasn’t yet formed fully. Various approaches to ethics take different things as fundamental. I want to consider consent. Most (all?) other candidates for fundamental concepts depend on consent. This raises questions about the range of choices we face with regard to consent.

Jonathan Haidt suggests that there are 6 moral foundations, care/harm, fairness/cheating, authority/subversion, loyalty/betrayal, liberty/oppression, a and sanctity/degradation. Gert lists ten prohibitions and a method for judging exceptions. MacIntyre advocates virtue ethics. And many people, perhaps beginning with Bentham, advocate consequentialism.

Care/harm doesn’t outrank voluntary/involuntary. Consent determines what counts as care or harm. The same doctor can make the same incision, but in one case it counts as care and in another it counts as harm, depending on whether the patient consents. Care and harm are never objective in the sense that we can draw lines between them that disregard the attitudes of the participants. (This excludes the case of minor children, who need a guardian to consent for them.) The ability of third parties to overrule the consent of a competent adult on the basis of care/harm qualifies as paternalism, where some subgroup of society chooses for the rest. When dealing with competent adults, we can’t use “it’s for your own good” as an excuse, even if it applies.

Haidt's other moral foundations also depend on consent. Those who possess authority can give consent to have their authority ignored or violated. Those to whom loyalty is owed can consent to waive the obligation. Those who are entitled to liberty can consent to be imprisoned. Those who are entitled to fairness can consent to being treated unfairly.

Sanctity is a difficult case, since god rarely shows up and so can’t give consent. But if god did appear, a violation of the sacred could be sanctified by its consent. In every case, Haidt's foundations evaluate a situation differently depending on the consent of the participants.

Flourishing works no better. What am I justified in doing to you for your own good or flourishing in spite of your refusal to consent? My intention may be good, but if I force unwanted help on you that can’t be moral unless you are a child. This is just care/harm wearing different clothing, it is either voluntary or paternalistic.

What about Gert's ten prohibitions? Same story, plus a procedure for making exceptions. The difference between murder and euthanasia is consent. Pain can be caused when the victim consents. Etc. I have reservations about some of Gert's prohibitions, but even if I stipulate Gert's prohibitions, all of them lose their strength when the supposed victim consents. Death, pain, disabling, deprivation of freedom or pleasure, violating promises, and neglecting duty very clearly depend on the consent of the person receiving the action. Deception, cheating and obeying the law complicate matters. I think I could consent to be deceived, but I can’t think of a realistic example. A magic show is too mild a deception. Cheating isn’t cheating if it is done with consent. It is even more dependent on attitudes of participants than the others. Disobeying the law doesn’t count as disobeying the law, if the law maker, enforcers, and victims all consent.

I need to think more about virtue ethics. I am less familiar with that topic. Some of it focuses on purely internal factors, only incidentally affecting others who might consent or not. My initial thinking is that virtue ethics does not give us grounds to overrule other competent adults' choices.

I need to think more about consequentialism, too. Many sorts of social change could provide a net benefit to people in general (though currently this is impossible to measure), but only rarely could do so without counting as a loss to some persons, at least in the short run. What possibilities can we consider?

1. The subgroup that benefits decides for all, but compensates the losers.
2. The subgroup that benefits decides for all, and imposes the change for “the public good” without compensating losers.
3. Members of the subgroup that benefits change their behavior to conform to the new norms, leaving “losers” to decide for themselves how to proceed.

Did I leave any possibilities out? 1 is rarely used, while 2 and 3 are used frequently. 1 and 3 respect the consent of all participants. So although it isn’t impossible to reconcile consent and consequences, people sometimes feel justified in violating consent for the purpose of achieving some consequence. Apparently, if the winners gain enough, or if the losses of the losers are small or temporary, people feel justified in overruling the losers without compensating them. This might even be a superior outcome, if the “losers” are not really affected by the change, but just spoilers or free riders hoping for compensation.

That raises a question about how we ought to determine who can consent to what. But that will need to appear in another blog post.

This is a rough draft and may change. Comments invited.