Kristina Bogdan
University of Vienna
Within the ‘standard view’, consent is understood as a singular, intentional mental state directed at a specific act. However, this framework falls short of capturing the complexity of how consent is being communicated within sexual interactions. The aim of this paper is to explore how sexual consent can be effectively communicated.
R. Kukla applies speech act theory to sexual consent, arguing that consent emerges through a series of communicative moves rather than a single moment of permission. However, her model still treats consent as something that must be restated, even if metaphorically or through indirect speech. In contrast, E. Tilton and J. Ichikawa propose a meta-semantic, conventionalist view. They emphasize the content of what is consented to, which is shaped by shared social conventions. Consent, in their view, is given to specific versions of an act (e.g. sex with a condom), and when the act deviates from this understood agreement, it may become non-consensual. This approach highlights the importance of context and convention in understanding what kind of phenomenon consent is.
There is a key tension between treating consent as a series of confirmatory speech acts for specific sexual move (Kukla) and viewing it as a conventionally established background agreement (Tilton & Ichikawa). In my paper, I side with the latter, framing consent as a presupposition in the conversational common ground. Drawing on R. Stalnaker, presuppositions are mutually accepted assumptions that can guide expectations and permissible actions. I propose that consent often functions as an unchallenged presupposition within the common ground, shaping expectations and guiding permissible behavior. This dispositional view captures how sexual interactions evolve without repeated affirmations and accounts for the indirect, context-sensitive nature of sexual communication.
Ichikawa argues that permissible sex can occur without explicit consent language, and that insisting on such language may distort the interaction. My account addresses this critique by emphasizing the significance of consent.
This paper offers a reconceptualization of consent as a presuppositional, convention-sensitive element of sexual communication capable of capturing the nature of permissible sexual encounters.
Chair: Irene Lo Faro
Time: 03 September, 15:20 – 15:50
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 