---
title: Consent of the Dead
date: 2011-12-30
techne: :done
episteme: :fiction
slug: 2011/12/30/consent-of-the-dead/
---

[Sister Y observes][Sister Kaldor]:

> A market or social system may provide for individual choice in any given transaction, but a participant cannot decide *whether to be part of a market economy*. It's not [consent all the way down][Turtles], you might say.

The lack of consent is the strongest case for the immorality of bringing someone into existence, I think. Morality must be grounded in contracts (among other things, perhaps) and without consent, you have no Rule of Law, but tyranny. It might be a super-happy tyranny of fun, though. Evil has its upsides.

Assuming the necessity of consent, can there ever be a moral way to bring someone into existence? Maybe. Consider this simple thought experiment.

<%= image("twoface.jpg", "Two-Face") %>

The evil Doctor Deontology is trying to assemble his crew of supervillains. He has recently gotten his hands on a cryogenically frozen Two-Face and now considers reviving him. He knows that Two-Face always makes his important decisions by flipping a coin. Fortunately for him, Doctor Deontology also obtained this coin, and deontologist that he is, he wants Two-Face's consent first before he goes through with the procedure.

So he thinks, if Two-Face were already alive, he would simply flip this coin to answer my question. There is nothing special about *him* doing the flipping, so *I* can just flip the coin in his stead. So he does, the coin comes up heads and Doctor Deontology revives Two-Face after all.

Did he do so with Two-Face's consent?