Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contemporary/
Timestamp: 2015-11-29 14:04:47
Document Index: 629280833

Matched Legal Cases: ['§117', '§5', '§2', '§2', '§4', '§1', '§4', '§2', '§1', '§66']

Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Friends PDF Preview Author and Citation Info Back to Top Contemporary Approaches to the Social ContractFirst published Sun Mar 3, 1996; substantive revision Tue Dec 20, 2011
The idea of the social contract goes back, in a recognizably modern form, to Thomas Hobbes; it was developed in different ways by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. After Kant the idea largely fell into disrepute until it was resurrected by
John Rawls. It is now at the heart of the work of a number of moral and
political philosophers. The basic idea seems simple: in some way, the agreement
(or consent) of all individuals subject to collectively enforced social
arrangements shows that those arrangements have some normative property
(they are legitimate, just, obligating, etc.). Even this vague basic idea,
though, is anything but simple, and even this abstract rendering is objectionable
in many ways. To explicate the idea of the social contract we analyze
contractual approaches into five variables: (1) the nature of the contractual act;
(2) the parties to the act; (3) what the parties are agreeing to; (4) the reasoning
that leads to the agreement; (5) what the agreement is supposed to show.
The traditional social contract views of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau
crucially relied on the idea of consent. For Locke only “consent
of Free-men” could make them members of government (Locke 1689,
§117). Now in the hands of these theorists—and in much
ordinary discourse—the idea of “consent” implies a
normative power to bind oneself. When one reaches “the age of
consent” one is empowered to make certain sorts of binding
agreements—contracts. By putting consent at the center of their
contracts these early modern contract theorists (1) were clearly
supposing that individuals had basic normative powers over themselves
before they entered into the social contract (a point that Hume [1741]
stressed), and (2) brought the question of political obligation to the
fore. If the parties have the power to bind themselves by exercising
this normative power, then the upshot of the social contract
was obligation. As Hobbes (1651, 81 [chap xiv,¶7)
insisted, covenants bind; that is why they are “artificial
chains” (1651, 138 [chap. xxi, ¶5). According to James Buchanan, the key development of recent social contract theory has been to distinguish the question of what generates political obligation (the key concern of the consent tradition in social contract thought) from the question of what constitutional orders or social institutions are mutually beneficial and stable over time (1965b). The nature of a person's duty to abide by the law or social rules is a matter of a morality as it pertains to individuals (Rawls 1999, 293ff), while the design and justification of political and social institutions is a question of public or social morality. Thus, on Buchanan's view a crucial feature of more recent contractual thought has been to refocus political philosophy on public or social morality rather than individual obligation. Although contemporary social contract theorists still sometimes employ
the language of consent, the core idea of contemporary social contract theory is agreement.
“Social contract views work from the intuitive idea of
agreement” (Freeman 2007a, 17). Now one can endorse or agree to
a principle without that act of endorsement in any way binding one to
obey. Social contract theorists as diverse as Freeman and Jan
Narveson (1988, 148) see the act of agreement as indicating what
reasons we have. Agreement is a “test” or a heuristic. The “role of unanimous collective agreement” is in showing “what we have reasons to do in our social and political relations” (Freeman 2007, 19). Thus understood
the agreement is not itself a binding act—it is not a
performative that somehow creates obligation—but is
reason-revealing (Lessnoff 1986). If individuals are rational, what
they agree to reflects the reasons they have. In contemporary contract
theories such as Rawls's, the problem of justification takes center
stage. Rawls's revival of social contract theory in A Theory of
Justice thus did not base obligations on consent, though the
apparatus of an “original agreement” persisted. The aim of the original position, Rawls announced (1999, 16), is to settle
“the question of justification … by working out a problem of deliberation.”
The social contract in contemporary moral and political theory is an attempt, then, to solve a justificatory problem by converting it to a deliberative problem. At its heart is the
“question of justification.” As James Buchanan points out, “precepts for living together are not going to be handed down from on high” (1975, 3). Justifying social arrangements (showing that they have the requisite normative property, see §5 below) requires showing that all (suitably idealized)
citizens have reasons favoring the arrangements. Now this would be an
otiose requirement unless, to some extent, the reasons of citizens
differed. If all citizens had precisely the same set of reasons there
would be no point in showing what they all can agree to. The idea of a
unanimous collective agreement only does justificatory work when the
reasons of citizens can differ, and so it is an open question what
everyone has reason to endorse—what everyone would agree
to. Under conditions of reasonable pluralism, we cannot
suppose that the reasoning of one member of the public is a proxy for
everyone else's reasoning. Consequently, under reasonable pluralism
the requirement that every member of the public has reason to endorse
a social arrangement is not implied by one member doing so.
Given that the problem of justification has taken center stage, the
second aspect of contemporary social contract thinking appears to fall
into place: its reliance on models of hypothetical agreement. The aim
is to model the reasons of citizens, and so we ask what they would
agree to under conditions in which their agreements would be expected
to track their reasons. Contemporary contract theory is,
characteristically, doubly hypothetical. Certainly, no
prominent theorist thinks that questions of justification are settled
by an actual survey of attitudes towards existing social arrangements,
and are not settled until such a survey has been carried out. The
question, then, is not “Are these arrangements
presently the object of an actual agreement among citizens?” (If
this were the question, the answer would typically be
“No”.) The question, rather, is “Would
these arrangements be the object of an agreement if citizens were
surveyed?” Although both of the questions are, in some sense,
susceptible to an empirical reading, only the latter is in play in
present-day theorizing. The contract nowadays is always hypothetical
in at least this first sense.
There is a reading of the (first-order) hypothetical question “Would the arrangements be the object of agreement if___” which, as indicated, is still resolutely empirical in some sense. This is the
reading where what is required of the theorist is that she try to
determine what an actual survey of actual citizens would reveal about
their actual attitudes towards their system of social arrangements.
(This is seldom done, of course; the theorist does it in her
imagination. See, though, Klosko 2000). But there is another
interpretation that is more widely accepted in the contemporary
context. On this reading, the question is no longer a hypothetical
question about actual reactions; it is, rather, a hypothetical
question about hypothetical reactions—it is, as we have
said, doubly hypothetical. Framing the question is
the first hypothetical element: “Would it be the object of agreement
if they were surveyed?” Framed by this question is the second
hypothetical element, one which involves the citizens, who are no
longer treated empirically, i.e. taken as given, but are, instead,
themselves considered from a hypothetical point of view—as they
would be if (typically) they were better informed or more impartial,
etc. (see further §2.2 below). The question for most contemporary
contract theorists, then, is, roughly:“If we surveyed the idealized
surrogates of the actual citizens in this polity, what social
arrangements would be the object of an agreement among them?”
Famously, Ronald Dworkin has objected that a (doubly) hypothetical
agreement cannot bind any actual person. For the hypothetical analysis
to make sense, it must be shown that hypothetical persons in the
contract can agree to be bound by some principle P regulating
social arrangements. Suppose that it could be shown that your
surrogate (a better informed, more impartial version of you) would
agree to P. What has that to do with you? Where this
second-stage hypothetical analysis is employed, it seems to be
proposed that you can be bound by agreements
that others, different from you, would have made. While it
might (though it needn't) be reasonable to suppose that you can be
bound by agreements that you would yourself have entered into if given
the opportunity, it seems crazy to think that you can be bound by
agreements that, demonstrably, you wouldn't have made even if
you had been asked. This criticism is decisive, however, only if the
hypothetical social contract is supposed to invoke your normative
power to self-bind via consent. That your surrogate
employs his power to self-bind would not mean
that you had employed
your power. Again, though, the power to obligate oneself is not typically invoked in the contemporary social contract: the problem of deliberation is supposed to help us make headway on the problem of justification. So the question for contemporary hypothetical contract theories is whether the hypothetical agreement of your surrogate tracks your reasons to accept social arrangements, a very different issue.
It is almost a commonplace today that contemporary social contract theory relies on hypothetical, not actual, agreement. As we have
seen, in one sense this is certainly the case. However, in many ways the “hypothetical/actual” divide is artificial: the hypothetical agreement is meant to model, and provide the basis for, actual agreement. Understanding contemporary social contract theory is best achieved, not through insisting on the distinction between actual and
hypothetical contracts, but by grasping the interplay of the hypothetical and the actual.
The key here is Rawls's (1996, 28) distinction among the perspectives
The agreement of the parties in the deliberative model is certainly hypothetical in the two-fold sense we have analyzed: a hypothetical agreement among hypothetical
parties. But the point of the deliberative model is to help
us (i.e., “you and me”) solve our justificatory
problem—what social arrangements we can all accept as “free
persons who have no authority over one another” (Rawls 1958, 33). The
parties' deliberations and the conditions under which they deliberate,
then, model our actual convictions about justice and justification. As
Rawls says (1999, 514), the reasoning of the hypothetical parties
matters to us because “the conditions embodied in the
description of this situation are ones that we do in fact accept.”
Unless the hypothetical models the actual, the upshot of the
hypothetical could not provide us with reasons. Gerald Gaus describes something like this process as a “testing conception” of the social contract (2011a, 425). We use the hypothetical deliberative device of the contract to “test” our social institutions. In this way, the contemporary social contract is meant to be a model of the justificatory situation that all individuals face. The hypothetical and abstracted (see §2) nature of the contract is needed to highlight the relevant features of the parties to show what reasons they have.
Freeman has recently stressed the way in which focusing on the third perspective—of citizens in a well ordered society—
shows the importance of actual agreement in Rawls's contract theory. On Freeman's interpretation, the social contract must meet the condition of publicity. Freeman (2007b:15) writes:
Rawls distinguishes three levels of publicity: first, the publicity of
principles of justice; second, the publicity of the general beliefs in
light of which first principles of justice can be accepted (“that is,
the theory of human nature and of social institutions generally)”;
and, third, the publicity of the complete justification of the public
conception of justice as it would be on its own terms. All three
levels, Rawls contends, are exemplified in a well-ordered
society. This is the “full publicity” condition.
A justified contract must meet the full publicity condition: its
complete justification must be capable of being actually accepted by
members of a well-ordered society. The hypothetical agreement itself
provides only what Rawls (1996, 386) calls a “pro
tanto” or “so far as it goes” justification of
the principles of justice. “Full justification” is
achieved only when actual “people endorse and will liberal
justice for the particular (and often conflicting) reasons implicit in
the reasonable comprehensive doctrines they hold” (Freeman
2007b, 19). Thus understood, Rawls's concern with the stability of
justice as fairness, which motivated the move to political liberalism,
is itself a question of justification (Weithman, 2010). Only if the
principles of justice are stable in this way are they fully
justified. Rawls's concern with stability and publicity is not,
however, idiosyncratic and is shared by all contemporary contract
theorists. It is significant that even theorists such as James
Buchanan (2000 [1975], 26-27), David Gauthier (1986, 348), and Ken
Binmore (2005, 5-7)—who are so different from Rawls in other
respects—share his concern with stability.
How the contract theorist models the parties to the hypothetical
agreement, then, is determined by our (actual) justificatory
problem, and what is relevant to solving it. A major divide among
contemporary social contract theories thus involves defining the
justificatory problem. A distinction is often drawn between the
Hobbesian (“contractarian”) and Kantian
(“contractualist”) interpretations of the justificatory
problem. These categories are imprecise, and there is often as much
difference within these two approaches as between them, yet,
nevertheless, the distinction is useful in isolating some key disputes
in contemporary social contract theory. Among those
“contractarians” who—very roughly—can
be called followers of Hobbes, the crucial justificatory task is, as
David Gauthier puts it, to resolve the “foundational
crisis” of morality: From the standpoint of the agent, moral considerations present
themselves as constraining his choices and action, in ways independent
of his desires, aims, and interests….And so we ask, what reason can
a person have for recognizing and accepting a constraint that is
independent of his desires and interests? … [W]hat justifies paying
attention to morality, rather than dismissing it as an appendage of
outworn beliefs? (Gauthier 1991, 16)
If our justificatory problem is not simply what morality requires, but
whether morality ought to be paid attention to, or instead dismissed
as a superstition based on outmoded metaphysical theories, then
obviously the parties to the agreement must not employ moral judgments
in their reasoning. Another version of this concern is Gregory Kavka's
(1984) description of the project to reconcile morality with
prudence. On both these accounts, the aim of the contract is to show
that commitment to morality is an effective way to further one's
non-moral aims and interests. The justificatory problem is the problem
of satisfactorily answering the question “why be moral?”
This “contractarian” project is reductionist in a pretty
straightforward sense: it derives moral reasons from non-moral
ones. Or, to use Rawls's terminology, it attempts to generate the
reasonable out of the rational (1996, 53).
This approach is appealing for several reasons. First, insofar as we
doubt that moral reasons are genuine or motivationally effective, such
a reductionist strategy promises to ground morality on the prosaic
requirements of instrumentalist practical rationality. The
justificatory question “why be moral?” is transformed into
the less troubling question “why be rational?” Second,
even if we recognize that moral reasons are, in some sense, genuine,
contractarians like Kavka also want to show that prudent individuals,
not independently motivated by morality would have reason to
reflectively endorse morality. Furthermore, if we have reason to
suspect that some segment of the population is, in fact, knavish then
we have good defensive reasons based on stability to build our social
institutions and morality so as to restrain those who are only
motivated by prudence, even if we suspect that most persons are not so
motivated. Anticipating concerns about evolutionary stability (see
§4 below) Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan argue that a
version of Gresham's law holds in political and social institutions
that “bad behavior drives out good and that all persons will be
led themselves by even the presence of a few self-seekers to adopt
self-interested behavior” (2008 [1985], 68). We need not think
people are mostly self-seeking to think that social institutions and
morality should be justified to and restrain those who are.
On the other hand, “contractualists,” such as John Rawls,
John Harsanyi (1977), Thomas Scanlon (1998), Stephen Darwall (2006),
and Nicholas Southwood (2010) attribute ethical or political values to
the deliberative parties, as well as a much more substantive,
non-instrumentalist form of practical reasoning. The kinds of
surrogates that model the justificatory problem of ‘you and
me’ are already so situated that their deliberations will be
framed by ethico-political considerations. The agents' deliberations
are not, as with the Hobbesian theorists, carried out in purely
prudential or instrumentalist terms, but they are subject to the
‘veil of ignorance’ or other substantive conditions. Here
the core justificatory problem is not whether the very idea of moral
and political constraints makes sense, but what sorts of moral or
political principles meet certain basic moral demands, such as
treating all as free and equal moral persons, or not subjecting any
person to the will or judgment of another (Reiman 1990, chap. 1). This
approach, then, is non-reductionist in the sense that not all of
morality is derived from the non-moral. Many of the concerns with
this approach to contract theory are related to the particular
idealization of the parties that the substantive conception of
practical rationality in the contract procedure requires. 2.2 The Level of Idealization and Abstraction
The core idea of social contract theories, we have been stressing, is
that the deliberation of the parties is supposed to model the
justificatory problem of “you and me.” Now this pulls
social contract theories in two opposing directions. On the one hand,
if the deliberations of the hypothetical parties are to
model our problem and their conclusions are to be of
relevance to us, the parties must be similar to us. The
closer the parties are to “you and me” the better their
deliberations will model you and me, and be of relevance to us. On the
other hand, the point of contract theories is to make headway on our
justificatory problem by constructing parties that are idealizations
of you and me, suggesting that some idealization is necessary and
salutary. To recognize that some forms of idealization are problematic
does not imply that we should embrace what Gaus has called
“justificatory populism” that every person in a society
must actually assent to the social and moral institutions in question
(Gaus 1996, 130-131). Such a standard would take us back to the older
social contract tradition based on direct consent. But, as we saw in
§1, modern contract theories are concerned with appeals to our
reason, not our self-binding power of consent. Despite possible problems, there are two important
motivations behind idealization of the deliberative parties. First, you and I, as we now
are, may be confused about what considerations are relevant to our
justificatory problem. We have biases and false beliefs; to make
progress on solving our problem of justification we wish, as far as
possible, to see what the result would be if we only reasoned
correctly from sound and relevant premises. So in constructing the
hypothetical parties we wish to idealize them in this way. Ideal deliberation theorists like Habermas (1985) and Southwood (2010), in their different ways, are deeply concerned with this reason for idealization. On the face
of it, such idealization does not seem especially troublesome, since
our ultimate concern is with what is justified, and so we want the
deliberations of the parties to track good reasons. But if we idealize
too far from citizens as they presently are—suppose we posit
that they are fully rational in the sense that they know all the
implications of all their beliefs and have perfect
information—their deliberations may not help much in solving our
justificatory problems. For example, suppose that hyper-rational and
perfectly informed parties would have no religious beliefs, so they
would not be concerned with freedom of religion or the role of
religion of political decision making. But our problem is that, among
tolerably reasonable but far from perfectly rational citizens,
pluralism of religious belief is inescapable. Consequently to gain
insight into the justificatory problem among citizens of limited
rationality, the parties must model our imperfect rationality. Secondly, social contract theories are pulled towards idealized and abstracted representations of the parties in order to render the choice situation determinate. This goal of determinacy, however, can have the effect of eliminating the pluralism of the parties that was the original impetus for contracting in the first place. In his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy Rawls tells us that “a normalization of interests attributed to the parties” is “common to social contract doctrines” and it is necessary to unify the perspectives of the different parties so as to construct a “shared point of view” (2007, 226). Here Rawls seems to be suggesting that to achieve determinacy in the contract procedure it is necessary to “normalize” the perspectives of the parties. The problem, however, is this. Suppose that the parties to the contract closely model you and me, and so they have diverse bases for their deliberations—
religious, secular, perfectionist, and so on. In this case it is hard
to see how the contract theorist can get a determinate result. Just as you and I disagree, so will the parties. Social contract theorists
have sought to generate a determinate result by modeling the parties in a very abstracted way, supposing that they are all centrally concerned with promoting their conception of the good, and insuring that they reason in the same way. Rawls (1999, 121) acknowledges that
his restrictions on particular information in the original position are necessary to achieve a determinate result. If we exclude “knowledge of those contingencies which set men at odds … ” then since “everyone is equally rational and similarly situated, each is convinced by the same arguments”(Rawls 1999,
17, 120). Gaus (2011a, 36-47) has recently argued that a determinative result
can only be generated by an implausibly high degree of abstraction, in which the basic pluralism of evaluative standards—the core
of our justificatory problem—is abstracted away. Thus, on Gaus's view, modelings of the parties that make them anything approaching representations of you and me will only be able to generate a non-singleton set of eligible social contracts. The parties might agree that some social contracts are better than none, but they will disagree on their ordering of possible social contracts. This conclusion, refined and developed in (Gaus 2011a, Part Two) connects the traditional problem of indeterminacy in the contract procedure with the contemporary, technical problem of equilibrium selection in games (see Vanderschraaf, 2005). A topic we will explore more in §4 below. It is possible, however, that determinacy may actually require
diversity in the perspective of the deliberative parties in a way that
Rawls and others like Harsanyi didn't expect. The reason for this is
simple, the proof is somewhat complex. Normalizing the perspectives
of the parties assumes that there is one stable point of view that has
all of the relevant information necessary for generating a stable and
determinate set of social rules. There is no reason, antecedently, to
think that such a perspective can be found, however. Instead, if we
recognize that there are epistemic gains to be had from a
“division of cognitive labor” there is reason to prefer a
diverse rather than normalized idealization of the parties to the
contract (see Weisberg and Muldoon, 2009 and Muldoon 2009). There is
reason to conclude that if we wish to discover social contracts that
best achieve a set of interrelated normative desiderata (e.g.,
liberty, equality, welfare, etc.), a deliberative process that draws
on a diversity of perspectives will outperform one based on a strict
normalization of perspectives (Gaus 2011b). James Buchanan goes even
further, eliminating all idealization and normalization of the parties
(2000 [1975], 221-222). Although, insofar as Buchanan and other
contractarians model the parties as guided solely by the reasoning
characteristic of Homo Economicus there is some idealization of
the parties in terms of their practical rationality.
Social contract theories differ about the object of the contract. In
the traditional contract theories of Hobbes and Locke the contract was
about the terms of political association. In particular, the problem
was the grounds and limits of citizen's obligation to obey the
state. In his early formulation, Rawls's parties deliberated about
“common practices” (1958). In his later statement of his
view Rawls took the object of agreement to be principles of justice to
regulate “the basic structure:” The basic structure is understood as the way in which the
major social institutions fit together into one system, and how they
assign fundamental rights and duties and shape the division of
advantages that arises through social cooperation. Thus the political
constitution, the legally enforced forms of property, and the
organization of the economy, and the nature of the family, all belong
to the basic structure. (Rawls 1996, 258)
For Rawls, as for most contemporary contract theorists, the object of agreement is not, at least directly, the grounds of political obligation, but the principles of justice that regulate the basic institutions of society. Freeman (2007a: 23),
perhaps the preeminent student of Rawls, focuses on “the social role of norms in public life.” James Buchanan is concerned with justifying constitutional orders of social and political institutions (2000[1975]). Gauthier (1986), Scanlon (1998), Darwall (2006), Southwood (2010), and Gaus (2011a) employ the contract device to justify inter-personal moral claims. The common thread that runs through all of these contemporary accounts is an idea at the heart of the contract theory, namely that rules and constraints, at whatever level, must be justified to those whom they apply. There is some debate over how to understand this condition (see Gauthier 2003) but some version of it underlies the desire for agreement inherent in the idea of the social contract. The level at which the object of the contract is described is apt to affect the outcome of the agreement. “A striking feature of Hobbes' view,” Russell Hardin points out, “is that it is a relative assessment of whole states of affairs. Life under one form of government versus life under anarchy” (2003, 43). Hobbes could plausibly argue that everyone would agree to the social contract because “life under government” is, from the perspective of everyone,
better than “life under anarchy.” However, if a Hobbesian sought to divide the contract up into, say, more fine-grained agreements about the various functions of government, she is apt to find that agreement would not be forthcoming on many functions. As we “zoom in”
(Lister, 2010) on more fine-grained functions of government, the contract is apt to become more limited. If the parties are simply
considering whether government is better than anarchy, they will opt for just about any government (including one that funds the arts); if
they are considering whether to have a government that funds the arts
or one that doesn't, it is easy to see how they may not agree on the former. In a similar way, if the parties are deliberating about entire moral codes, there may be wide agreement that all the moral codes, overall, are in everyone's interests; if we “zoom in” in specific rights and duties, we are apt to get a very different answer.
The point is that the level of agreement on the object of the contract
will likely be very different depending on how concretely the contract
itself is specified. One way to specify the alternative to the
contract so as to make the choice situation more determinate is to
think of the alternative to the contract not as an idealized
“state of nature” but rather as the status quo. Both
Binmore (2005, 5) and Gaus (2011a, 424-446) suggest that the contract
procedure can be used as a device to test different sets of rules
against the status quo. This is one way to incorporate the insight
from Buchanan that when we theorize:
We start from here, from where we are, and not from some idealized
world peopled by beings with a different history and utopian
institutions. Some appreciation of the status quo is essential before
discussion can begin about the prospects for improvements. (2000
[1975], xv)
Another way to avoid ambiguity is the determination of the object of
agreement is to follow Buchanan and, arguably, Gauthier in developing
a two-stage contract theory. Buchanan divides his contract procedure
into two stages: the constitutional and post-constitutional. The
object of the constitutional stage is to develop a system of
constraints that will allow individuals to peacefully co-exist, what
Buchanan calls the “protective state” (2000 [1975]). The
state of nature, for Buchanan, is characterized by both predation and
defense. The amount of time one can engage in productive enterprises
is decreased because of the need to defend the fruits of those
enterprises against those who would rely on predation rather than
production. We have reason to contract, according to Buchanan, in
order to increase the overall ability of everyone to produce by
limiting the need for defense by constraining the ability to engage in
predation. Once the solution to the predation-production conflict has
been solved by the constitutional contract, members of society also
realize that if all contributed to production of various public goods,
the productive possibility of society would be similarly increased.
This second, post-constitutional stage, involves what Buchanan calls
the “productive state”. Each stage is logically distinct
though there are causal relationships between changes made at one
stage and the efficacy and stability of the solution at the later
stage. The distinction between the two stages is analogous to the
traditional distinction between commutative and distributive justice.
Although these two are often bound up together in contemporary
contract theory, one of Buchanan's novel contributions is to suggest
that there are theoretical gains to separating these distinct objects
Suppose we have identified the object of the parties' deliberations: practice, norms, basic institutions, moral codes, etc. Now social contract theories fundamentally differ in whether the parties reason differently or the same. As we have seen (§2.2) in Rawls's contract everyone reasons the same: the collective choice problem is reduced to the choice of one individual. Any one person's decision is
a proxy for everyone else. In social contracts of this sort, the description of the parties (their motivation, the conditions under which they choose) does all the work: once we have fully specified the reasoning of one party, the contract has been identified.
As Rawls recognized in his 1958 essay “Justice as
Fairness” one way for parties to resolve their disagreements is
to employ bargaining solutions, such as that proposed by
R.B. Braithwaite (1955). Rawls himself rejected bargaining solutions
to the social contract since, in his opinion, such solutions rely on
threat advantage and “to each according to his threat advantage
is hardly a principle of fairness” (Rawls 1958, 58n). Gauthier,
however, famously pursued this approach, building his
Morals by Agreement on the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining
solution (see also Gaus 1990, Ch. IX). Binmore (2005) has recently
advanced a version of social contract theory that relies on the Nash
bargaining solution, as does Muldoon (2009) while Moehler (2010)
relies on a “stabilized” Nash bargaining solution. In
addition to Rawls's concern about threat advantage, a drawback of all
such approaches is the multiplicity of bargaining solutions, which can
significantly differ. Although the Nash solution is most favored
today, it can have counter-intuitive implications. Furthermore, there
are many who argue that bargaining solutions are inherently
indeterminate and so the only way to achieve determinacy is to
introduce unrealistic or controversial assumptions (Sugden, 1990,
1991). Similar problems also exist for equilibrium selection in games
(see Vanderschraaf 2005 and Harsanyi and Selten 1988) Although
appealing to a bargaining solution can give determinacy to a social
contract, it does so at the cost of appealing to a controversial
commensuration mechanism.
We might distinguish bargaining from aggregation solutions. Rather
than seeking an outcome that (as, roughly, the Kalai-Smorodinsky
solution does) splits the difference between various claims, we might
seek to aggregate the individual rankings into an overall social
choice. Arrow's theorem and related problems with social choice rules
casts doubt on any claim that one specific way of aggregating is
uniquely rational: all have their shortcomings (Gaus 2008,
chap. 5). Harsanyi (1977, chaps. 1 and 2; 1982) develops a contractual
theory much like Rawls's. Reasoning behind a veil of ignorance in
which people do not know their post-contract identities, he supposes
that rational contractors will assume it is equally probable that they
will be any specific person. Moreover, he argues that contractors can
agree on interpersonal utility comparisons, and so they will opt for a
contract that aggregates utility at the highest average (see also
Mueller 2003, chap. 26). This, of course, depends on the supposition
that there is a non-controversial metric that allows us to aggregate
the parties' utility functions. Binmore (2005) follows Harsanyi and
Amartya Sen (2009, Chap. 13) in arguing that interpersonal comparisons
can be made for the purposes of aggregation, at least some of the
time. One of the problems with this approach, however, is that if the
interpersonal comparisons are incomplete they will not be able to
produce a complete social ordering. As Sen points out, this will lead
to a maximal set of alternatives where no alternative is dominated by
any other within the set but also where no particular alternative is
optimal (Sen, 1997). Instead of solving the aggregation problem,
then, interpersonal comparisons may only be able to reduce the set of
alternatives without being able to complete the ordering of
alternatives. 4.3 Equilibrium
There is a long tradition of thinking of the social contract as a kind
of equilibrium. Within this tradition, however, the tendency is to
see the social contract as some kind of equilibrium solution to a
prisoner's dilemma type situation (see Gauthier, 1986 and Buchanan,
2000 [1975]). Brian Skyrms (1996, 2004) suggests a different
approach. Suppose that we have a contractual negotiation in which
there are two parties, ordering four possible “social
contracts”:
Let 3 be the best outcome, and let 1 be the worst in each person's
ranking (Alf's ranking is first in each pair). We thus get Figure
BETTY Hunt Stag
The Stag Hunt, Skyrms argues, “should be a focal point for
social contract theory” (2004, 4). The issue in the Stag Hunt is
not whether we fight or not, but whether we cooperate and gain, or
each go our separate ways. There are two Nash equilibria in this game:
both hunting stag and both hunting hare. Alf and Betty, should they
find themselves at one of these equilibria, will stick to it if each
consults only his or her own ranking of options. In a Nash
equilibrium, no individual has a reason to defect. Of course the
contract in which they both hunt stag is a better contract: it is
Pareto superior to that in which they both hunt hare. The Hare
equilibrium is, however, risk superior in that it is a safer
bet. Skyrms argues that the theory of iterated games can show not
simply that our parties will arrive at a social contract, but how they
can come to arrive at the cooperative, mutually beneficial
contract. If we have a chance to play repeated games, Skyrms holds, we
can learn from Hume about the “shadow of the future”:
“I learn to do a service to another, without bearing him any
real kindness; because I foresee, that he will return my service, in
expectation of another of the same kind, and in order to maintain the
same correspondence of good offices with me and with others”
(Skyrms 2004, 5). Sugden, along different lines, also suggests that
repeated interactions, what he calls “experience” is
essential to the determination of which norms of social interaction
actually hold over time (1986). The problem with equilibrium solutions is that, as in the stag hunt
game, many games have multiple equilibria. The problem then becomes
how to select one unique equilibrium from a set of possible ones. The
problem is compounded by the controversies over equilibrium refinement
concepts (see Harsanyi and Selten 1988). Many refinements have been
suggested but, as in bargaining theory, all are controversial to one
degree or another. One of the interesting developments in social
contract theory spurred by game theorists such as Skyrms and Binmore
is the appeal to evolutionary game theory as a way to solve the
commensuration and equilibrium selection problem (Vanderschraaf
2005). What cannot be solved by appeal to reason (because there simply
is no determinate solution) may be solved by repeated interactions
among rational parties. The work of theorists such as Skyrms and
Binmore also blurs the line between justification and
explanation. Their analyses shed light both on the justificatory
problem—what are the characteristics of a cooperative social
order that people freely follow?—while also explaining how such
orders may come about.
The use of evolutionary game theory and evolutionary techniques is a
burgeoning and exciting area of contract theory. One of the many
questions that arise, however, is that of why, and if so under what
circumstances, we should endorse the output of evolutionary
procedures. Should one equilibrium be preferred to another merely
because it was the output of an evolutionary procedure? Surely we
would want reasons independent of history for reflectively endorsing
some equilibrium. This problem highlights the concern that social
contracts that are the product of evolutionary procedures will not
meet the publicity condition (§1.3) in the
right kind of way. If the publicity condition seems harder to meet,
the evolutionary approach provides a powerful and dynamic way to
understand stability. Following Maynard Smith, we can see stability
as being an evolutionarily stable strategy equilibrium or an ESS
(1982). Basically this is the idea that an equilibrium in an
evolutionary game where successful strategies replicate at higher
rates is stable if the equilibrium composition of the population in
terms of strategies is not susceptible to invasion by a mutant
strategy. An ESS is an application of the Nash equilibrium concept to
populations. A population is evolutionarily stable when a mutant
strategy is not a better response to the population than the current
mix of strategies in the population. This gives a formal
interpretation of Rawls's conception of “inherent
stability” and to Buchanan's notion that social contracts should
be able to withstand subversion by a sub-population of knaves. This
new conception of stability combined with the dynamic nature of
evolutionary games provides interesting new ways for the social
contract theorist to model the output of the contract.
Suppose, then, that we have arrived at some social contract. Depending on the initial justificatory problem, it will specify principles (P) that have some normative property (N)—
such as justice, morality, authority, obligation, legitimacy, mutual benefit, and so on. But, supposing that the contract has generated principle P with the relevant normative property N,
precisely what is shown by the fact that P was generated through the contractual device?
Throughout we have been distinguishing the justificatory problem from
the deliberative model. Now the strongest that could be claimed for a
contractual argument is that the outcome of the deliberative model is
constitutive of both the correct solution of the justificatory problem and that P has N. On this “constructivist” reading of the outcome of the deliberative model, there is no independent and determinate external justification that P has N that the contractual device is intended to approximate, but, rather, that P is the outcome of the deliberative model is the truth-maker for “P has N”. Rawls, along with Gauthier and Buchanan, were
attracted to such a reading. Rawls (1999, 104) describes the argument
from the original position as invoking “pure procedural
justice”—the deliberative situation is so set up that
whatever principles it generates are, by the fact of their generation,
just. But though Rawls sometimes seemed attracted to this strong
interpretation, his considered position is that the outcome of the
deliberative model is indicative (not constitutive) of the correct
solution to “the question of justification” (1999, 16). We
might say that the deliberative model is evidence of the
proper answer to the question of justification. However, this is still
consistent with Rawls's “constructivism” because the
answer to the justificatory problem is
constitutive of P’s having N. So we
might say that Rawls's two principles are just—simply because
they are in reflective equilibrium with the considered judgments of
you and me, and that they would be chosen in the original position is
indicative of this.
The weakest interpretation of the contract is that the contractual result is simply indicative of the correct answer to the justificatory problem, which itself is simply indicative of the fact that P has N. One could be a “realist,” maintaining
that whether P has N is a fact that holds whether or not the contract device generates principle P with N, and independently of whether the correct answer to our justificatory problem (i.e., what we can justify to each other) is that P has N. There is still room for contractualism here, but not “constructivism.” Some, for example, have argued that T.M. Scanlon's theory is actually based on a sort of natural rights theory, where these rights are prior to the contract (Mack 2007). Even if this is correct, Scanlon can be a sort of social contract theorist. The diversity of possible approaches within social contract theory indicates the variety of different uses to which social contract theory can be applied.
The social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all stressed that the justification of the state depends on showing that
everyone would, in some way, consent to it. By relying on consent, social contract theory seemed to suppose a voluntarist conception of political justice and obligation: what is just depends on what people
choose to agree to—what they will. Only in Kant (1797) does it become clear that consent is not fundamental to a social contract view: we have a duty to agree to act according to the idea of the “original contract.” Rawls's revival of social contract theory in A Theory of Justice did not base obligations on consent, though the apparatus of an “original agreement” persisted as a way to help solve the problem of justification. As the
question of public justification takes center stage (we might say as contractualist liberalism becomes justificatory liberalism), it becomes clear that posing the problem of justification in terms of a deliberative or a bargaining problem is a heuristic: the real issue is “the problem of justification”—what principles
can be justified to all reasonable citizens or persons.
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contractualism |
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In September 2008, Gerald Gaus became a co-author of this entry for
the purpose of maintaining it and keeping it current. In December
2011, Gaus was joined by co-author John Thrasher. Changes introduced
in thes and subsequent versions reflect joint modifications to the
entry which had been solely authored and maintained by Fred
<ggaus@email.arizona.edu>
<john.thrasher@monash.edu>