Moral Contractarianism

Peter Stemmer has developed an elegant and impressive theory of normativity and morality. In this article, I try to show that he does not achieve two goals he set for himself. First, his theory does not capture the categorical bindingness of moral demands, even in Stemmer’s own interpretation of categorical bindingness: it does not show that we must follow moral demands no matter what our personal goals and desires are. Second, just because it would be rational to establish positive moralities (...) in a hypothetical pre-moral scenario, it does not follow – and Stemmer does not establish – that only positive moralities that are in the interest of all members are legitimate. For that reason, his contractarian theory collapses into relativism. (shrink)

Abstract. In Minimal Morality (2018), I develop a multilevel social contract theory that accommodates deep moral pluralism. In this article, I reply to comments by Gaus, Van Schoelandt and Cooper concerning the three core projects of the book that aim to (i) revive orthodox rational choice contractarianism as a viable approach to the social contract, (ii) integrate this approach into a comprehensive social contract theory and (iii) show the applicability of the theory to the real world. My replies clarify some (...) of the main features of the theory, defend its core projects and expand discussion of some of its details in order to show that the theory can address the challenges raised. (shrink)

A Hobbesian Realist position concerning Nation States and their generative grounds in the Social Contract obligates the United States to accept any and all refugees of conflict who are willing to recognize the sovereign power of the United States by submitting to citizenship requirements determined by the United States.

The topic of moral diversity is not only prevalent in contemporary moral and political philosophy, it is also practically relevant. Moral diversity, however, poses a significant challenge for moral theory building. John Thrasher (Synthese, forthcoming), in his discussion of public reason theory, which includes social contract theory, argues that if one seriously considers the goal of moral constructivism and considerations of representation and stability, then moral diversity poses an insurmountable problem for most public reason theories. I agree with Thrasher that (...) moral diversity poses a significant challenge for orthodox multistage social contract theories. In fact, I even add a further problem for such theories under the assumption of deep moral diversity. Nevertheless, I argue that my (Moehler, Minimal morality: a multilevel social contract theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018) recently developed multilevel social contract theory overcomes these problems. I focus on some of the underexplored features of this theory to show that multilevel social contract theory offers one conceptually coherent and plausible way to render social contract theory viable and relevant for modern diverse societies. (shrink)

The prospective introduction of autonomous cars into public traffic raises the question of how such systems should behave when an accident is inevitable. Due to concerns with self-interest and liberal legitimacy that have become paramount in the emerging debate, a contractarian framework seems to provide a particularly attractive means of approaching this problem. We examine one such attempt, which derives a harm minimisation rule from the assumptions of rational self-interest and ignorance of one’s position in a future accident. We contend, (...) however, that both contractarian approaches and harm minimisation standards are flawed, due to a failure to account for the fundamental difference between those ‘involved’ and ‘uninvolved’ in an impending crash. Drawing from classical works on the trolley problem, we show how this notion can be substantiated by reference to either the distinction between negative and positive rights, or to differences in people’s claims. By supplementing harm minimisation with corresponding constraints, we can develop crash algorithms for autonomous cars which are both ethically adequate and promise to overcome certain significant practical barriers to implementation. (shrink)

A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to deliver a (...) straightforward solution to the so-called “conditional fallacy.” But it faces some formidable challenges. On the face of it, it seems to be straightforwardly conceptually incoherent. And it seems to deliver a solution to the conditional fallacy at the cost of being vulnerable to what I shall call “the concessional fallacy.” I shall consider how, if at all, these challenges are to be met. I shall then conclude by considering what this might mean for the so-called “ideal/non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

Abstract: How should contractualists seek to accommodate and respond to the existence of radical pluralism within contemporary liberal states? Ryan Muldoon has recently argued that a) the dominant Kantian liberal model of contractualism is hopelessly ill equipped to do so but that b) there is a particular kind of Hobbesian contractualism that can do much better. I raise some problems concerning the capacity of Muldoonian contractualism to respond appropriately to the problem of radical pluralism. I then propose a very different (...) kind of solution that involves embracing an advice model of contractualism. -/- Keywords: contractualism; contractarianism; pluralism; diversity; disagreement . (shrink)

One can justify moral rules on the basis of their advantageousness without equating morality and advantage.

The problem of trust is discussed in terms of David Hume's meadow-draining example. This is analyzed in terms of rational choice, evolutionary game theory and a dynamic model of social network formation. The kind of explanation that postulates an innate predisposition to trust is seen to be unnecessary when social network dynamics is taken into account.

In this pithy and highly readable book, Brian Skyrms, a recognised authority on game and decision theory, investigates traditional problems of the social contract in terms of evolutionary dynamics. Game theory is skilfully employed to offer new interpretations of a wide variety of social phenomena, including justice, mutual aid, commitment, convention and meaning. The author eschews any grand, unified theory. Rather, he presents the reader with tools drawn from evolutionary game theory for the purpose of analysing and coming to understand (...) the social contract. The book is not technical and requires no special background knowledge. As such, it could be enjoyed by students and professionals in a wide range of disciplines: political science, philosophy, decision theory, economics and biology. (shrink)

Gauthier argues in Morals by Agreement that morality is derivable from rationality. A crucial premise is that rational bargaining is procedurally fair. Gauthier defends this claim by trying to show that his principle of rational bargaining determines a fair distribution of the overall return from cooperation, including the cooperative surplus. He supports this point in part by the argument from agreement: since (1) procedurally fair principles proportion return to contribution, and since (2) every bargainer has the power to agree in (...) equal measure, and since (3) the agreement component of the bargainer’s contribution is what makes the cooperative surplus available, it follows (4) that fairness requires a distributive principle that divides the cooperative surplus equally among the bargainers. I argue that the falsity of (3) not only renders the argument unsound, it refutes the conclusion. Hence Gauthier should think that rational bargaining is not procedurally fair and that his own derivation of morality from rationality is unsound. (shrink)

David Gauthier develops morality in the social contract tradition as an emergent property rationally necessitated by the presence of inefficiency. To demarcate situations in which morality arises from those in which it does not, two principles, Strategic Emergence and Market Emergence, are motivated and assumed by Gauthier to be equivalent. Following the work of Bob Bright, this paper formalizes and expands upon a demonstration of the inconsistency of the two principles. Eliminating each of the emergence conditions is considered to resolve (...) the inconsistency. Additionally, the Kantian equilibrium is examined in place of the Nash equilibrium; however, Gauthier’s approach resists such amendments. (shrink)

Traditional rule consequentialism faces a problem sometimes called the ideal world objection—the worry that by looking only at the consequences in worlds where rules are universally adhered to, the theory fails to account for problems that arise because adherence to rules in the real world is inevitably imperfect. In response, recent theorists have defended sophisticated versions of rule consequentialism which are sensitive to the consequences in worlds with less utopian levels of adherence. In this paper, I argue that these attempts (...) underestimate the problem they are designed to avoid—the worry about ideal worlds is only one manifestation of a deeper and more general problem, the distant world objection, which threatens not only the sophisticated revisions of rule consequentialism, but any view which determines what we ought to do by evaluating worlds that differ from ours in more than what is up to us. (shrink)

I take it as my assignment to criticize the Gauthier enterprise. At the outset, however, I should express my general agreement with David Gauthier's normative vision of a liberal social order, including the place that individual principles of morality hold in such an order. Whether the enterprise is, ultimately, judged to have succeeded or to have failed depends on the standards applied. Considered as a coherent grounding of such a social order in the rational choice behavior of persons, the enterprise (...) fails. Considered as an extended argument implying that persons should adopt the moral stance embodied in the Gauthier structure, the enterprise is, I dunk, largely successful. Considered as a set of empirically falsifiable propositions suggesting that persons do, indeed, choose as the Gauthier precepts dictate, the enterprise offers Humean hope rather than Hobbesian despair. (shrink)

In Morals by Agreement, David Gauthier tries to provide a justification of morality from morally neutral premises within the constraints of an instrumental conception of reason. But his reliance on this narrow conception of reason creates problems, for it suggests that moral motivation is self-interested. However, Gauthier holds that to act morally is to act for the sake of morality and others, not oneself. An individual who so acts has what he calls an affective capacity for morality. He attempts to (...) reconcile the tension between the self-interested account of moral behaviour and the affective capacity for morality by showing that the latter could develop from the former without violating the constraints of instrumental rationality. I argue, first, that his account is incomplete and assumes what it has to demonstrate; and, second, that this cannot be remedied with any plausibility. Finally, I argue that Gauthier covertly relies on a substantive claim about human good that is inconsistent with the instrumental conception of reason. (shrink)

Bargaining and distribution of benefits accruing from social cooperation are central topics in contractarian accounts of morality or distributive justice in general and David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement in particular. In this paper, I raise some problems for MbA both with regards to bargaining over the benefits of social cooperation and the distribution of such benefits. The worries I raise piggyback on a couple of Jan Narveson’s earlier queries of some of the topics in MbA: those of ‘questionable foundation’ and (...) redundancy. However, I go beyond the substance of these queries by arguing that they raise fundamental worries about the correctness of the description of the elements of the bargaining situation, and the role and significance of agreement in MbA. (shrink)

This article assesses Jean Hampton’s feminist contractarianism by considering the way in which she draws together the contradictory positions of Hobbes and Kant to produce a test for exploitation in personal relationships. The ways in which this work fits with her other analysis of retribution, gratitude and self-worth are examined. Hampton’s work is evaluated in the context of Carole Pateman’s argument that moral theories distract from the political analysis of who has a voice in relationships. Hampton’s work presumes the social (...) and economic structures that Pateman has done so much to understand. It is useful as a claim for justice in personal relationships, to be considered as part of consciousness-raising or public debate. (shrink)

Gauthier's title is potentially misleading. The phrase “morals by agreement” suggests a social contract theory of morality according to which basic moral principles arise out of an actual or hypothetical agreement. John Rawls defends a hypothetical agreement version, arguing that the basic principles of justice are those that would be agreed to in an initial position of fair equality. I myself defend an actual agreement version, arguing that the moral principles that apply to a person derive from implicit conventions the (...) person has accepted in dealing with other people. Gauthier's view is different from either of these sorts of contract theory. Instead, he holds that certain basic principles of impartiality are prior to actual agreements. (shrink)

Is morality rational? In this book Gauthier argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. He proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of cooperation, rather than according to what would give an individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice (...) did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason. Gauthier's argument includes an account of value, linking it to preference and utility; a discussion of the curcumstances in which morality is unnecessary; and an application of morals by agreement to relations between peoples at different levels of development and different generations. Finally, he reflects on the assumptions about individuality and community made by his account of rationality and morality. (shrink)

In a 2013 article, David Gauthier noted upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Morals by Agreement that his contractarian approach to morality had found a niche among ‘some of those who remain unpersuaded by either Kantianism or utilitarianism’. In this article I will focus on Pareto optimization and I will argue that the Gauthier contract, even in spite of the article’s revisions, is still less useful for consultation purposes than Gauthier is assuming. To highlight the conceptual distance that (...) I think separates the Gauthier contract from real-world circumstances—a separation that is greater than Gauthier supposes—I will focus on the problem of ‘civic defection’. The point is not for us to repudiate as such the deliverances of the Gauthier model, but simply to use caution in our deployment of the model, and, in order to access the full extent of the model’s offerings, to resist the temptation to deploy it in the service of purposes which it is not capable of accomplishing. (shrink)

There is an idea, extremely common among social contract theorists, that the primary function of social institutions is to secure some form of cooperative benefit. If individuals simply seek to satisfy their own preferences in a narrowly instrumental fashion, they will find themselves embroiled in collective action problems – interactions with an outcome that is worse for everyone involved than some other possible outcome. Thus they have reason to accept some form of constraint over their conduct, in order to achieve (...) this superior, but out-of-equilibrium outcome. A social institution can be defined as a set of norms that codify these constraints.1 Simplifying somewhat, one can then say that social institutions exist in order to secure gains in Pareto-efficiency. (shrink)

David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement is the most complete and suggestive contractarian theory of morality since the work of Rawls. In this anthology a number of prominent moral and political philosophers offer a critical assessment of Gauthier's theory and its three main projects: developing a contractarian foundation for morality, defending a theory of rational choice, and supporting the claim that rationality requires one to keep one's agreements. An introduction sets out Gauthier's project, while Gauthier himself has the last word, responding (...) to the critiques. This collection will interest moral and political philosophers, social theorists, and specialists in the philosophy and theory of law as well as management sciences. (shrink)

Imagine living in the future in a world already damaged by humankind, a world where resources are insufficient to meet everyone's basic needs and where a chaotic climate makes life precarious. Then imagine looking back into the past, back to our own time and assessing the ethics of the early twenty-first century. "Ethics for a Broken World" imagines how the future might judge us and how living in a time of global environmental degradation might utterly reshape the politics and ethics (...) of the future. This book is presented as a series of history of philosophy lectures given in the future, studying the classic texts from a past age of affluence, our own time. The central ethical questions of our time are shown to look very different from the perspective of a ruined world. The aim of "Ethics for a Broken" World is to look at our present with the benefit of hindsight - to reimagine contemporary philosophy in an historical context - and to highlight the contingency of our own moral and political ideals. (shrink)

Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things that we might otherwise not do. The question for the contractarian is whether the costs of these social rules can be rationally justified. I argue that traditional contract theories have tended to underestimate the (...) importance of evaluating the cost of enforcement and compliance in the contract procedure. In addition, the social contract has been understood narrowly as a method of justifying specifically moral or political rules. I defend a broader version of contractarianism as a justificatory model that can be used to evaluate any set of social rules or institutions that impose costson agents. In so doing, I argue that contractarianism is a general method of evaluating and justifying the rules that order the structure of social life. (shrink)

Norbert Hoerster has tried to show on the basis of what I call special and general interests that it is rational to endorse moral judgements. I argue that Hoerster’s attempt to vindicate the rationality of moral judgements fails. By appealing to special interests Hoerster can only establish the rationality of endorsing judgements that – by Hoerster’s own standards – are not moral judgements because they do not pass the test of generalization. While the appeal to general interests, on the other (...) hand, indeed establishes the rationality of endorsing judgements that pass the test of generalization, it does so only for some but not all people; for this reason, the vindicated judgements do not qualify as moral judgements either. (shrink)

A short interview with Thomas Scanlon about his contractualist moral theory. (Note: A revised and expanded version appears in Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).

Human beings are peculiar. In laboratory experiments, they often cooperate in one-shot prisoners’ dilemmas, they frequently offer 1/2 and reject low offers in the ultimatum game, and they often bid 1/2 in the game of divide-the-cake All these behaviors are puzzling from the point of view of game theory. The first two are irrational, if utility is measured in a certain way.1 The last isn’t positively irrational, but it is no more rational than other possible actions, since there are infinitely (...) many other Nash equilibria besides the one in which both players bid 1/2. At the same time, these behaviors seem to indicate that people are sometimes inclined to be cooperative, fair, and just. In his stimulating new book, Brian Skyrms sets himself the task of showing why these inclinations evolved, or how they might have evolved, under the pressure of natural selection. The goal is not to justify our ethical intuitions, but to explain why we have them.2.. (shrink)

This book questions the often implicit assumption of many contemporary political philosophers that a society needs its citizens to adopt some shared basic qualities, views, or capabilities. Christoph Luetge provides an alternative view, which relies on mutual advantages as the fundamental basis of society.

For contractarians, justice is the result of a rational bargain. The goal is to show that the rules of justice are consistent with rationality. The two most important bargaining theories of justice are David Gauthier’s and those that use the Nash’s bargaining solution. I argue that both of these approaches are fatally undermined by their reliance on a symmetry condition. Symmetry is a substantive constraint, not an implication of rationality. I argue that using symmetry to generate uniqueness undermines the goal (...) of bargaining theories of justice. (shrink)

Epicurean contractarianism is an attempt to reconcile individualistic hedonism with a robust account of justice. The pursuit of pleasure and the requirements of justice, however, have seemed to be incompatible to many commentators, both ancient and modern. It is not clear how it is possible to reconcile hedonism with the demands of justice. Furthermore, it is not clear why, even if Epicurean contractarianism is possible, it would be necessary for Epicureans to endorse a social contract. I argue here that Epicurean (...) contractarianism is both possible and necessary once we understand Epicurean practical rationality in a new way. We are left with an appealing version of teleological, individualistic contractarianism that is significantly different from Hobbesian contractarianism. (shrink)

Classical bargaining theory attempts to solve a bargaining problem using only the information about the problem contained in the representation of its possible outcomes in utility space. However, this information usually underdetermines the solution. I use additional information about interpersonal comparisons of utility and bargaining power. The solution is then the outcome that maximizes the sum of power-weighted utilities. I use these results to advance a contractarian argument for a utilitarian form of social cooperation. As the original position, I propose (...) a hypothetical situation in which the members of society are rational, fully informed, free, and equal. I argue that in this original position they would adopt a utilitarian form of social cooperation. I conclude that utilitarian cooperation constitutes a moral ideal toward which society ought to aspire. (shrink)

In a recent article, Gauthier rejects orthodox rational choice contractarianism in favor of a revisionist approach to the social contract that, according to him, justifies his principle of maximin proportionate gain as a principle of distributive justice. I agree with Gauthier that his principle of maximin proportionate gain cannot be justified by orthodox rational choice contractarianism. I argue, however, that orthodox rational choice contractarianism, before and after Gauthier, is still a viable approach to the social contract, although the scope of (...) this approach is limited. Orthodox rational choice contractarianism can be applied fruitfully to moral philosophy only in situations of deep moral pluralism in which moral reasoning is reduced to instrumental reasoning, because the members of society do not share, as assumed by traditional moral theories, a consensus on moral ideals as traditionally conceived as a starting point for the derivation of moral rules but only an overarching end that they aim to reach. If orthodox rational choice contractarianism is applied adequately, then it offers a viable approach to the social contract that, in contrast to Gauthier’s theory, justifies a rival principle for distributive conflicts that is valid for deeply morally pluralistic societies. (shrink)