Consent

Abstract

This paper analyses the notion of consent. Two approaches to the topic are distinguished: one which analyses consent in terms of the ethical concepts associated with an established institutional practice and a second in which the concept is analysed by reference to behavioural and mental concepts. The second approach is used to develop an analysis by which consent is taken to consist in the inducing of reliance in a hearer by a speaker who undertakes either not to interfere with some future action of the hearer or to undertake a course of action which the hearer has previously proposed. On the basis of this definition a concept of tacit consent is defined, whose force in political argument, it is suggested, is analogous to the legal concept of ‘consideration’ in the law of contract. Finally, the analysis is illustrated in terms of a reconstructed account of Locke's theory of obligation.