"Informed consent and knowledge of one's own ignorance" – this is the Danish title of the three-year research project that Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, professor of philosophy, will lead.
The idea behind the research project arose in connection with his previous research into epistemological aspects of consent.

"Here I and my research team realized that common theories about what informed consent requires are completely out of step with practice. It made us curious – is it our practice, or is it the theories that are wrong with it?"

According to Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, almost everyone agrees that a valid consent must be sufficiently informed, but a broad consensus has not yet been reached on what exactly this means.

"In particular, it has proven challenging to understand how the requirement for informed consent can harmonize with the fact that valid but apparently uninformed consent often occurs, for example in medical practice or in consent to data sharing." The project thus aims to develop a new understanding of informed consent, which explains and takes into account that informed consent can be compatible with considerable ignorance about what you consent to, explains Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen.

The main hypothesis of the project is that informed consent presupposes that the consenting party is sufficiently aware of his or her own ignorance.

"Informed consent plays a hugely important moral and legal role. I hope that the project can provide a more secure ethical justification for the practice, and a deeper understanding of what valid consent actually requires. Through the collaboration with the Danish Medical Association and the Danish Data Ethics Council, I also hope that in the long term the project can contribute to better guidelines for informed consent," says Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen.

In connection with the research project, collaboration agreements have been made with the Danish Medical Association and the Danish Data Ethics Council, as well as five leading researchers in ethics and epistemology from Denmark, the UK and the USA.

The research project has received DKK 3,127,523 from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Facts about informed consent

Informed consent is a core concept in the legal regulation of medical treatment in particular and of the processing of sensitive personal data, but also more generally as a condition for morally acceptable treatment of others in a wide range of contexts. It is given in medical practice when a patient actively accepts a medical treatment, procedure, or test after receiving sufficient information about, among other things, the purpose, risks, and side effects of the treatment.

An example of informed consent might be when a doctor recommends surgery and the patient only makes a decision after the doctor has explained the procedure, potential risks and benefits, and alternative treatment options.
 

Contact

Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Professor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Mobile: +4561718439
Mail: filasp@cas.au.dk