Coercion has the power to undermine morally valid consent. We think that this is true in business, in medical research, and in sexual relations. However, the most popular account of what grounds consent in the moral realm – the waiving of rights – has a hard time explaining the relationship between coercion and consent. I examine a problem often referred to as “The Paradox of Blackmail” and suggest that there is a more difficult but related “Paradox of Rape.” The paradox emerges from the combination of two theses about sexual consent that are almost entirely uncontested, with a similarly uncontested but incompatible thesis about coercion.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Thursday, 7 January 2016
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Hallie Liberto, University of Connecticut
Moderator: Dr Qu Hsueh Ming

About the Speaker:

Hallie Liberto is an assistant professor of philosophy at UConn. She joined the faculty in the fall of 2011 after completing her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin – Madison under the advisorship of Daniel Hausman. She works in moral and social philosophy. Lately she has been writing on these topics: promises, exploitation, sexual consent, and the nature and transfers of rights.

She is spending the 2014-2015 academic year at Princeton University as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow.