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The Epistemology of Consent

In this chapter, I draw attention to the fact that—depending on our account of what consent is—there may be hard and important epistemological questions about consent as well. I will suggest that debates about consent often mistake epistemological issues for metaphysical ones. People who defend so-called “affirmative consent” views sometimes are accused of, or even take themselves to be, offering a new (and controversial) view about the nature of consent. I think this is a mistake. I argue that the right way of understanding “affirmative consent” requirements is as a view about what is required, epistemically speaking, before one can justifiably believe that another person has consented. This view will be justified, if it is, because of background views about epistemic justification and the way in which epistemic justification interacts with moral norms governing action. Embracing an “affirmative consent” standard does not commit one to embracing either an “attitudinal/mental” view (consent requires only the right mental attitude) or a “performative/behavioral” view (consent requires the right mental attitude plus some communicative performance regarding that attitude) of the nature of consent.