Philosophy of Sexual Consent

Alexander Guerrero’s forthcoming paper, The Epistemology of Consent , argues that philosophical debates about consent often mistake epistemic questions about consent for metaphysical questions, and that debates about “affirmative consent” often feature this mistake. On Guerrero’s view, when we consider whether we ought to accept “affirmative consent” as the standard for sexual consent, we are considering an epistemic account about what is required before we can either justifiably believe that someone has consented or what is required before we can act on that belief, not a metaphysical account of when there is consent. Therefore, if we are justified in accepting the affirmative consent standard, it will be because of our views on epistemic justification and the relationship between beliefs/knowledge and action. Guerrero discusses implications for two contexts: sexual consent and consent to medical treatment. This summary will focus only on his treatment of the former. On the metap