One concrete example: Imagine the app and the laws exists as I describe them. Person A has in their settings that they can’t give any valid consent while drunk (and sets a very complex system to change this setting, such that it’s impossible for them to change it while drunk, or for others to guess the password). While drunk, Person A has sex with Person B. The next morning, Person A calls the police, their level of alcohol is measured, and Person B is declared guilty of rape, because they live in a country in which they know that not having a contract makes them automatically guilty. There is no need to clear what happened that night; it might even be that drunk A initiated and pushed the whole thing. But Person B will have been taught at school that all of this is legally irrelevant (which is way I make a distinction between morality and politics; it might be that Person B was just stupid and not evil, but intention is not something that politics can easily take into account).
I think your feeling of horribility comes from thinking I’m keeping the properties of Christian marriage that I rejected: “life-long” and “not cancellable”. In my example we could have a one-night contract, cancellable at any point during the night.
But more to the point, I don’t think your feeling of horribility is relevant here: Duncan has a long list of things that divide people into “consenting to that would be horrible” and “getting that would be wonderful”. Do you want to impose your (sexual) preferences on everyone else? I have no doubt that that’s not what you mean. So if you find X horrible, simply don’t give permission to anyone to do X? Why is it such a problem that other people give permission to it? And that consent is the only criterion used to evaluate whether a specific X was legal or not?
Surely you wouldn’t, for instance, propose something and say “it’s okay, it’s based on the same principles as slavery!” or “It’s okay, it’s based on the same principles as genocide!”
No, I’m comparing it explicitly to sales. Unlike under feudalism, we don’t believe in inalienable rights any more, so if someone complains after an exchange, nobody inspects whether the object essentially belongs to a person, like lands essentially belonged to a specific noble and tithes essentially belonged to a specific bishop. We inspect whether everyone consented (and potentially other equally formal things like whether the terms were clear, etc.). I’m taking the formal content of Kant’s formula and getting rid of the Christian content, so what I’m saying is: people consent to many different things, so looking at what happened is not the relevant criterion; rather looking at whether there is an objective proof of consent.
One concrete example: Imagine the app and the laws exists as I describe them. Person A has in their settings that they can’t give any valid consent while drunk (and sets a very complex system to change this setting, such that it’s impossible for them to change it while drunk, or for others to guess the password). While drunk, Person A has sex with Person B. The next morning, Person A calls the police, their level of alcohol is measured, and Person B is declared guilty of rape, because they live in a country in which they know that not having a contract makes them automatically guilty. There is no need to clear what happened that night; it might even be that drunk A initiated and pushed the whole thing. But Person B will have been taught at school that all of this is legally irrelevant (which is way I make a distinction between morality and politics; it might be that Person B was just stupid and not evil, but intention is not something that politics can easily take into account).
I think your feeling of horribility comes from thinking I’m keeping the properties of Christian marriage that I rejected: “life-long” and “not cancellable”. In my example we could have a one-night contract, cancellable at any point during the night.
But more to the point, I don’t think your feeling of horribility is relevant here: Duncan has a long list of things that divide people into “consenting to that would be horrible” and “getting that would be wonderful”. Do you want to impose your (sexual) preferences on everyone else? I have no doubt that that’s not what you mean. So if you find X horrible, simply don’t give permission to anyone to do X? Why is it such a problem that other people give permission to it? And that consent is the only criterion used to evaluate whether a specific X was legal or not?
No, I’m comparing it explicitly to sales. Unlike under feudalism, we don’t believe in inalienable rights any more, so if someone complains after an exchange, nobody inspects whether the object essentially belongs to a person, like lands essentially belonged to a specific noble and tithes essentially belonged to a specific bishop. We inspect whether everyone consented (and potentially other equally formal things like whether the terms were clear, etc.). I’m taking the formal content of Kant’s formula and getting rid of the Christian content, so what I’m saying is: people consent to many different things, so looking at what happened is not the relevant criterion; rather looking at whether there is an objective proof of consent.