Itin

Hello everyone.

This is my first time posting on this board but I've been browsing it for a fair while and I like what I see.

Anyway, I was just wondering what everyone's opinion is on social contract theories in general (Rawlsian contractarianism in particular) and what their main strengths and defects are.

However, I don't have a great deal of proficiency in philosophy so if you could try to keep your answers on the simple side that would be great.

Thanks alot and I hope to be hearing from all of you.

Jason

Alonzo Fyfe

Elsewhere, I am writing a series:

Ethics Without God: A Personal Journey

My main problem with these types of theories goes as follows:

Rawls proposed a method of divining moral truth is to ask us to imagine that we are under a veil of ignorance. This veil conceals from us the specifics of our life -- our social status, our race, our gender, our sexual orientation, all of these individual particulars, and to come up with a set of rules. After the rules have been agreed upon, we would pop into our original bodies and live out our lives under these rules. Justice consists of the rules we would all agree to.

This form of argument required a leap of logic that I just could not grasp. I could imagine somebody coming up to me, as I lay on my bed in my dorm room, asking, "What would you be doing now if you were to learn that the building were on fire?"

My answer, "I would probably leave the building as quickly as safety allowed."

If the person who was then asking the question would follow this up by saying, "Then you should be doing that now. Quick. Get out of the building."

"Why? Is it on fire?"

"No, but you said you would leave the building if it was on fire."

"So what? When the building is on fire, give me a call. What I would do in some fictitious fantasy situation has no relevance to what I should be doing here and now where those fictions remain false."

This is my problem with a Rawlsian "social contract" theory. In what sense am I bound here and now, in the real world, by decisions that I would make in a fantasy world under conditions that do not exist in reality?

I have a lot of sympanthy with social contract theories in general. But the specific family of social contract theories that ask us to accept rules we would adopt in some idealistic and unrealistic situations, I don't see the logic of such an inference.

Itin

Thanks Alonzo.

Yeah, I have noticed that about the original position; it does tend to force a commitment when you wouldn't really have a reason to.

In your opinion, do you think that that is an insurmountable problem for contract theories that depend on abstract bargaining situation? I really hope not, because I think the 'veil of ignorance' that he talks about really deals with the need for an ethical system to discount irrelevant facts about individuals.

Also, what if the decisions arrived at really are to the benefit to all concerned (the system is self-supporting) does that have any effect on the validity of the system?

xorbie

I disagree Alonzo, and I believe your argument is a strawman. Rawls says that society needs to be just, and uses the Veil of Ignorance as a way to make it just. If you knew you would be white, it might be convenient to say "all whites should be super rich, and everyone else should be a slave." The idea of the veil is that you don't know that you are gonna be white. Your argument that it brings up counterfactuals and fantasy situations is not really valid, because the point is that just because you might not be X or Y race/sex/religion or whatever, does not mean nobody is. To change your example, the question asked would be "If there was a building on fire somewhere, what do you think should be done?" You would of course answer "I think the people should run out and the fire should be put out." And hopefully, that is what is being done.

I believe that the problem with the veil as more to do with the fact that any one who sees people as fundamentally equal would not have a problem going forth and attempting to create this just society. And anyone who was already racist might say "what do you mean, pretend I am white/asian/black? That could never be, those people aren't even human (or just unequal)." This argument is of course absurd, but that doesn't change the veil's uselessness.

I do however like Rawls, because as I recall he had some other interesting tidbits and various mechanisms for actually acheiving this just society.

Alonzo Fyfe

Xorbie:

I do not think that your rephrasing of the analogy to the veil of ignorance does it justice -- if you'll pardon the pun.

If the veil of ignorance is meant to be concerned with "what somebody somewhere in a situation I don't happen to be in should do under some hypothetical situation that does not exist and, in the case of Rawls' veil of ignorance, will never exist," then it has nothing to do with me and nothing to say about what I should and should not do.

Your objections pointing out how an alternative decision-making process without the veil of ignorance leads to even worse implications only goes to show that the veil of ignorance theory is not the only theory that has serious problems.

If we were, indeed, limited to these two options then we would be in a seriously bad predicament. However, we face no such limit. The list of alternative theories is quite long, including countless forms of consequentialism, deontological theories, natural law theories, divine command theories, "value as secondary property" theories, hybrid theories, impartial observer theories.

On this list, I rank social contract theories near the top. Natural law and divine command theories are built on an ontological fiction. At least social contract theories can be squared with what appears to be the ontological facts -- that there is no such thing as intrinsic value or such a being as an intrinsic value maker.

Yet, in spite of its position near the top of available options, it has serious problems that prevents it from being at the top of available options. Among these, the most serious problem is that it demands this entirely unwarranted leap of logic that what some imaginary person in an imaginary world facing imaginary and impossible choices somehow applies to me in the real world facing real world choices.

There is just no way in the rules of logic that you can build a sound argument from a false assumption. A sound argument requires true assumptions, and "people sitting behind a veil of ignorance" is not a true assumption.

Alonzo Fyfe

I truly believe that a moral argument that begins with a false assumption also begins with an insurmountable problem.

It may, in fact, deal "with the need for an ethical system to discount irrelevant facts about individuals" -- but it is not the only way to deal with such a need. In fact, all of the alternatives to social contract theory (from consequentialism to impartial observer theories) deal with the same need one way or another. In this sense, social contract theories does not really have an advantage.


I would argue that if the decisions arrived at really are to the benefit of all concerned, you don't need a "veil of ignorance" myth to justify it. The fact that it is a benefit to all concerned is justification enough.

echidna

Yes, I haven�t done any social contract threads since I first started posting here, but from back then, my biggest problem with social contract theories was that such contracts rely on some form of mutual back-scratching. Unless the other person can do something for me, there�s no need for me to do something for me. Most interpretations of Social Contract Theory have read pretty amorally to me.

One might say, we need these even-handed rules in case you were born disabled or within an ethnically prejudiced demographic, and the easy response is simply �but I wasn�t�.

Graeme

The theory as I see it really requires an acceptance of the world's inherent unfairness, which presupposes either an uncaring or nonexistent deity.

In addition to this it requires an acceptance that one is doing a 'good thing' by creating a 'level playing field', even if it's not very clear how one will directly benefit.

However I think the 2nd problem is by far the minor one, and if theism were not so very prevalent (and often attacked) I think the theory would be much more popular than it is.

I personally think it subjectively has merit.

Itin

Thanks for your input everyone.

The main reason I'm asking is because I'm "shopping around", so to speak, among meta-ethical theories and I really like Rawls (but to be fair, he's the only one who I've read a book by, the rest have just been information I get on the internet). But, I'm open to change, so if anyone can recommend something better to look at I'd be glad to check it out.

Furby

The problem with your analogy, as I see it, is that firstly, your actions (or lack of) do not affect anyone other than yourself. Secondly, the hypothetical situation creates the problem, which is otherwise, non-existent. In the case of the rule makers, their decisions affect everyone in the society and they are faced with the problem that a set of rules are needed, so they have to make those rules, one way or another. The veil of ignorance is merely a method of determining what is the best way to make those rules.

I think a better analogy would be this. Suppose one day you came to your hostel building and discovered that many of the rooms in the building are on fire. You possess the only fire extinguisher and are the only person capable of putting out those fires. Furthermore, because of the speed in which the fires are engulfing the rooms, you cannot save all the rooms.

Now, suppose your own room is at the top floor of the building (you are currently at the lobby). If you were to act selfishly, and aim to save your own belongings first, the time wasted in you running up the stairs to reach your room, would mean that there would only be time to save 4 rooms.

Suppose you were to pretend that you do not know where your room is located. Naturally, you would choose a strategy that maximizes the number of rooms you can save as there will be a greater chance that your own room will be among those saved. Hence, you would choose to save the nearest rooms (those on the ground floor). In this way, you end up saving 20 rooms instead of the previous 4.

If you choose not to act, all the rooms burn down, and everyone suffers. Thus, it would make sense for you to do something.

Similarly, if the rule makers do not make any rules at all, the society turns into a state of anarchy and everyone, including themselves will suffer for it. Given that they have to make those rules, if they pretended that they do not know their own race, status etc, they will naturally make a set of rules that will benefit the most individuals, simply because this would mean there will be a higher probability that they would be among those individuals.

You can perhaps argue that there are better methods for making those rules, just as it might be better if the person with the fire extinguisher simply called the fire station, but I think that is a separate issue from the one you were addressing.