Richard Pettigrew (2026), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 113(2), 251–261 — DOI-10.1111/phpr.70131
Key takeaways
- Whether consent is morally effective depends on the mechanism by which the underlying preference was formed — unjustly imposed sanctions or manipulated evidence defeat it, while preferences formed through (even coerced) attention do not — which leaves us pervasively uncertain whether the consent we receive changes the moral facts.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-144. What follows is what the work says about itself.
Under ideal conditions, consent turns something impermissible into something permissible, but coerced consent does not. Pettigrew argues that consent also fails when the preferences behind it were formed in certain ways under pressure from unjust social forces. He catalogues mechanisms of preference formation, sorts them into those that can ground effective consent and those that cannot, and explains the division. He ends with a puzzle: the relevant mechanisms are usually opaque to the person consenting and to the person receiving consent.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 70 seconds of active reading over 1 session. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-144 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as a short, clearly organised proposal that turns the adaptive-preferences debate into a question about mechanisms and free agency; the criterion is argued by cases and left rough by the author’s own account, and one of the seven mechanisms it promises to sort (Amor Fati) is never sorted.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-144, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: medium — t=70s, an open-access and short (11-page) paper with a crisp taxonomy; the skim captures the verdicts but not each mechanism’s argument.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-144 is that reading):
- A mechanism-sensitive account of when shaped preferences still count bears directly on consent to, or preferences induced by, recommender systems and persuasive AI; check the full treatment of Association, Choice, Imitation and Amor Fati, which the skim did not reach in detail.
- The closing puzzle of moral uncertainty is unresolved; check whether other work of Pettigrew’s (e.g. on choosing for changing selves) addresses it.
Access when seeded: philpapers and Wiley both return 403 here. Read the full published CC-BY PDF linked from the author’s homepage (Google Drive): abstract, introduction, “Some Examples”, “Two Attempts at an Account” (perfectionist content-based; historical), “On the Formation of Preferences”, “The Effectiveness of Consent” and the concluding puzzle. Received 2026-01-08, accepted 2026-05-30; Crossref online date 2026-06-10. A PhilArchive version (PETEOA-7) may predate this and was not reachable. The keywords printed in the PDF (“Bayesian | chance | logic | philosophy of mathematics | probability”) are evidently a publisher error, so the keywords here are my own.