Onora O’Neill (Cambridge) & Jonathan Wolff (UCL): On Informed Consent

Informed consent is not the most fundamental ethical standard, but a means of securing respect for other, more basic standards or aims. It is neither possible nor required when public goods – such as sound currency or clean air – are to be provided. Where it is possible and can be required, as in transactions with individuals, it must be tailored to their cognitive capacities. Genuine, legitimating consent is demanding, and is not achieved by the ‘tick and click’ approaches used in many commercial transactions.

Onora O’Neill is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is also the current Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and a crossbench member of the House of Lords
Jonathan Wolff is Professor of Philosophy at University College London

Chair: Peter Dennis, LSE Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSEethicsmatters

A podcast of this event is available here.