Here in the United States people often think of the frontier towns of the American West with a sense of nostalgia. Famous movie stars like Clint Eastwood 🤠 and John Wayne glorified a time when you could easily deliver justice to your enemies .
But if you really think about it, it would be terrible to live in a society that focused on raw power. Everyone would live in constant fear, focused on protecting what they have or getting what they need. Society would become a system where only the strong survived. And even the strong wouldn’t survive for very long.
When you think about the rules that govern your society, have you ever wondered why they exist and who decided on them?
Social contract theories offer a way to understand these questions by suggesting that moral and political rules are based on an agreement among individuals.
This idea goes beyond just laws and governance; it dives deep into ethics, exploring how we interact with one another and what we owe to each other as members of a community.
Social Contract Theories
At its core, social contract theory states that individuals come together to form a society based on mutual agreements. This agreement defines the rights and responsibilities of each person and the rules everyone must follow. Think of it like a group project: everyone agrees on specific tasks and expectations to achieve a common goal.
In moral and political philosophy, social contract theories help us understand how societies can organize themselves. They prompt us to think about what justice means and how we can create a fair community. By examining these theories, you gain insight into the foundations of your own society and the moral principles that guide it.
Who are the Key Philosophers in Social Contract Theories?
In the late 16th century the philosopher Thomas Hobbes saw firsthand the brutality of the English Civil War. He saw how people lived in constant fear and reverted to what he called a "state of nature."
He argued that the only way to reclaim society was to have a group of people establish a set of moral rules to govern the citizens. A government was also needed to enforce these rules. He called this the social contract.
A few centuries later philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke started to talk about these rules as a set of citizens’ rights. In fact, some of Locke’s work was copied verbatim into the US Declaration of Independence.
Hobbes didn’t believe in morality the way John Locke or Jeremy Bentham did. He didn’t believe that you could find morality through reason or shared happiness. Instead he thought that morality was something that human beings could achieve through a series of contracts.
Now these aren’t written down like your cell phone contract. These contracts are understood in society as simple bargains that you make so everyone can live together cooperatively.
In the 20th century Professor Tim Scanlon took Hobbes’s social contract theory and used it to create a larger moral philosophy called contractualism.
Contractualism
So think of it this way. Imagine you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the expressway. As you wait you look over and see someone driving on the shoulder. This person has decided that the rules everyone else is following don’t apply to them.
If you look at it from the perspective of deontology, this act is immoral because it’s not universalizable. This person isn’t necessarily bad, but if everyone drove in this lane then it would cause chaos on the road.
If you look at it through the lens of utilitarianism you see that it isn’t really helping anyone, but it isn’t really harming anyone either. It doesn’t really impact anyone else’s commute.
But if you look at it in terms of contractualism, then this person is clearly acting immoral. Because everyone else who’s driving is following a well understood contract. I’m-behind-you and you’re-behind-me. We all follow the speed limit to move forward. We agreed to this contract when we decided to share the road.
But the person riding on the shoulder has broken this contract. They’ve agreed to share the road, but now that the agreement is inconvenient, they decided to pursue their own self-interest. In a sense they’ve ignored “what we owe each other.”
A lot of Artificial Intelligence ethics challenges are hinged on this notion of what we owe each other. And the answer to that is not yet clear. Organizations and individuals are still deciding the simple agreements we need to better share our data.
Wrapping Up
Social contract theories provide a valuable lens through which to examine the ethics of your society. By understanding the principles behind these theories, you can better appreciate the moral framework that governs your interactions with others. As you engage with the social contract, you contribute to building a fair and just community for everyone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are some of the key social contract theorists?
Key social contract theorists include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Hobbes and Locke started modern political philosophy. Rousseau expanded on their ideas. He stressed the general will and the collective good in the social contract tradition.
What role does the concept of "natural rights" play within Social Contract Theory?
In Social Contract Theory, natural rights are the basic rights and freedoms that you have naturally. Social contract theorists say you agree to create a society and government to protect these natural rights. These rights include life, freedom, and property.
What is the "state of nature" according to Social Contract Theory?
Social contract theorists use the concept of the "state of nature" to talk about how things were before rules and governments. Imagine everyone looking out for themselves, with no one in charge – it could become chaotic. The idea is that people make a deal to create rules and work together to avoid this chaos and stay safe.
This is my weekly newsletter that I call The Deep End because I want to go deeper than results you’ll see from searches or LLMs. Each week I’ll go deep to explain a topic that’s relevant to people who work with technology. I’ll be posting about artificial intelligence, data science, and ethics.
This newsletter is 100% human written 💪 (* aside from a quick run through grammar and spell check).
References:
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-contract/
- https://iep.utm.edu/social-contract-theory/
- https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/what-is-social-contract-theory
- https://www.harvardlawreview.org/
- https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-us-history/period-3/american-revolution/a/social-contract-theory
- https://ethics.org.au/social-contract-theory/