Catharine MacKinnon, Tanya Palmer, John Gardner, Jonathan Ichikawa, and others have argued that in ideal cases of sex, the concept of consent is inapplicable and, so, consent is not involved. They think that the concept of consent is applicable only in situations involving some negative feature, and so, in the best of cases, consent isn't applicable because the involved parties are "beyond a state of consent". I believe that these arguments are mistaken. The concept of consent is applicable even in ideal cases; it would just be odd for a speaker to describe the situation as involving consent because such a description is an understatement (but, importantly, the description is applicable and true). Largely, the problem with their arguments stems from a confusion between presuppositions and implicatures. They misidentify situations where the concept of consent is inapliccable and situations where it is pragmatically odd for a speaker to say that the situation involves consent.

The Moral Necessity of Consent

Philosophers such as David Chalmers, Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne, David Lewis, Gideon Rosen, Robert Stalnaker, Peter van Inwagen, Timothy Williamson, and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, all have endorsed the thesis — call it 'Metaphysicalism' — that metaphysical possibility is the widest “genuine” type of possibility. Metaphysicalism entails that if a situation is not metaphysically possible, it cannot be genuinely possible in any other sense. Perhaps the most important aspect of this thesis is that virtually all defenses of S5 modal logic rely on it. Dorr and Hawthorne's new book, 'The Bounds of Possibility,' includes some of the most compelling arguments for Metaphysicalism and how Metaphysicalism (along with some uncontroversial premises) entails that S5 modal logic is correct. I summarize, clarify, and strengthen Dorr and Hawthorne’s arguments, but I also show that their view requires a controversial premise about which properties are one and the same. I argue against this premise but acknowledge that, if one were to endorse Metaphysicalism, this is the best way to do it. Implications about arguments for S5 modal logic are discussed.

On Absolute Possibility