For the minimum conditions for the word consent to have...

For the minimum conditions for the word consent to have meaningful application include at least that the man alleged to have consented shall somehow have signified his consent and that he shall have sometime indicated his understanding of what he has consented to. But neither of these conditions is satisfied by the doctrine of tacit consent.

Locke’s own doctrine also stands or falls with his particular version of the argument that natural rights derive from a moral law which we apprehend by reason.

In the Essay concerning Human Understanding he argues that although our moral ideas derive from sense experience, the relations between these ideas are such that “morality is capable of demonstration, as well as mathematics.” The propositions of morals can be apprehended as certain truths merely by a scrutiny of the terms which they contain and the ideas expressed by these terms. What are the key moral terms?

Good is that which causes pleasure or diminishes pain; evil that which causes pain or diminishes pleasure. Moral good is the conformity of our actions to a law the…