Does consent exist?

Question

If we are our bodies and nothing else?

Answer 1

This actually is a common objection against some versions of physicalism:

If there is nothing but our physical being doing what it does, how can things like "responsibility" or "consent" make any sense? Aren't they mere illusions that don't refer to anything real?

This is what is called a category error: concepts like "real" are applied to two different conceptual domains and it is pretended they mean the very same across those domains. This typically leads to illegitimate reductions like "consent is nothing but a neurological pattern" or Libet's famous "there is no free will". For a more elaborate discussion of that see this answer of mine.

Ultimately, it is indisputable that concepts like "responsibility" and "consent" refer to reality. Maybe not (meta)physical reality but certainly social, legal, or generally cultural reality. Pragmatically, nothing is gained by saying that one conceptual domain (physical domain) is real and the other (cultural domain) is not. Rather the opposite, considering our (perceptual, lived) reality is the cultural one, whereas the supposed physical reality of fields and quarks is an abstraction that can only be experienced via instruments and elaborate experiment.

Answer 2

Answer

The simple response is we are not our bodies. Am I no longer me if I lose an arm? It is a classic fallacy to claim that a system is no more than the sum of it's parts, because as the fallacies of composition and division inform us, we cannot impute properties of one to the other necessarily. :D

Also, does not my love of poetry inform my identity? Do I not have more than my body? As Klöcking has noted, to conflate the material and abstract would be a category mistake. I have thoughts, feelings, emotions, and moods, and strictly speaking it's relatively certain that they are not physical even if they may be shown to reduce or to be epiphenomena or are correlates to physical phenomena. Metaphysical necessity, therefore, is not a warrant to infer logical equivalence.

Answer 3

The concept of consent follows logically from the sense of self, without reference to the existence or inexistence of a soul. And the existence of the self is the most indubitable fact there is. One can argue about the nature of the self or that no self is possible without dualism, but one must accept the idea of consent does make sense either way.

As the scope of the question is "if we are our body", I will take for granted that physicalism is true and try to explain why consent and identity still make sense in this frame, and even why the issue of ontology (dualism, physicalism, etc) is irrelevant. I do know that the issue of physicalism is not settled, and personally think it can never be.

That aside, wether I am my body or not, it is obvious that "I" is. Descartes said "I think therefore I am": wether the thinking is the product of a brain, a soul, both combined or even some alien device sending parasitic thoughts to my conscience, there is something experiencing those thoughts as their own, and that thing we call "I". This fact is independent of how we try to explain it: even if I were to doubt the existence of "I", there would still be something experiencing this doubt. It is just the most indubitable of facts.

So, I exist. And I can experience lots of interactions from other people, agreeable or disagreeable. If you prick me, I bleed. If you tickle me, I laugh. If you poison me, I die. And if you wrong me, shall I not revenge? (At least, I'll experience anger)

Some experiences, like being in a room, or sexual intercourse, are agreeable if I agree to them and disagreeable if I don't. Being a simple physical body or having a soul is irrelevant to wether my appreciation of those experiences is real or not: I like it or I don't, and only me can judge of the pleasantnes of anything happening to me.

Therefore, I do appreciate when others ask for my permission before doing something involving my person. And in order to benefit from living in a society I have to assume others do as well, because when I ignore their own sense of self they get mad at me.