The standard account of informed consent has recently met serious criticism, focused on the mismatch between its implications and widespread intuitions about the permissibility of conducting research and providing treatment under conditions of partial knowledge. Unlike other critics of the standard account, we suggest an account of the relations between autonomy, ignorance, and valid consent that avoids these implausible implications while maintaining the standard core idea, namely, that the primary purpose of the disclosure requirement of informed consent is to prevent autonomy-undermining ignorance. The problem with the standard account, we argue, is that it fails to distinguish between different forms of ignorance–in particular, error and suspending ignorance–that have very different effects on individuals’ ability to provide valid consent. While error often undermines our ability to provide valid consent, suspending ignorance, we argue, does not. Once the moral weight of this distinction is appreciated, it becomes apparent that valid informed consent requires far less knowledge than suggested by the standard account.

知情同意的标准描述最近遭到了严厉的批评，主要集中在其含义与广泛的直觉之间的不匹配，即允许在部分知识的条件下进行研究和提供治疗。与标准账户的其他批评者不同，我们建议对自主、无知和有效同意之间的关系进行解释，以避免这些不合理的含义，同时保持标准的核心思想，即知情同意的披露要求的主要目的是防止破坏自治的无知。我们认为，标准账户的问题在于它无法区分不同形式的无知——特别是错误和暂缓无知——它们对个人提供有效同意的能力有非常不同的影响。虽然错误常常会破坏我们提供有效同意的能力，但我们认为，暂停无知不会。一旦认识到这种区别的道德重要性，很明显，有效的知情同意所需的知识远远少于标准账户所建议的知识。