In this paper, I explain why people seeking to flourish together fairly in the im- perfect world we share today ought to support a universal carbon tax with no exception for international aviation. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, I provide a free-standing analysis of emissions behavior at the individual moral level. Second, I offer a picture of ideal and non-ideal coordination based mostly on Kantian social contract theory. Third, I argue that in a non-ideal context, moral signals (...) about right relation offer a coordinating fulcrum around which meaningful if only partly coordinated action is possible. Fourth, I apply these conclusions to the case of aviation exceptionalism, focusing especially on instances of incomplete, overlapping, partly coordinated climate actions. I conclude that these arguments together amount to a case for reversing the Chicago Convention and applying a universal carbon tax that does not exclude international flights, ending aviation exceptionalism. (shrink)

Review of Ryan Muldoon's book Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond Tolerance (in Swedish).

Contracts are common, and some influential thinkers in the “modern” period of philosophy argued that the whole of society is created and regulated by a contract. Two of the most prominent “social contract theorists” are Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704).[2] This essay explains the origins of this tradition and why the concept of a contract is illuminating for thinking about the structure of society and government.

This essay examines the promise of the notion of modus vivendi for realist political theory. I interpret recent theories of modus vivendi as affirming the priority of peace over justice, and explore several ways of making sense of this idea. I proceed to identify two key problems for modus vivendi theory, so conceived. Normatively speaking, it remains unclear how this approach can sustain a realist critique of Rawlsian theorizing about justice while avoiding a Hobbesian endorsement of absolutism. And conceptually, the (...) theory remains wedded to a key feature of social contract theory: political order is conceived as based on agreement. This construes the horizontal tensions among individual or group agents in society as prior to the vertical, authoritative relations between authorities and their subjects. Political authority thereby appears from the start as a solution to societal conflict, rather than a problem in itself. I argue that this way of framing the issue abstracts from political experience. Instead I attempt to rethink the notion of modus vivendi from within the lived experience of political conflict, as oriented not primarily toward peace, but political survival. With this shift of perspective, the idea of modus vivendi shows us, pace Bernard Williams, that the “first political question” is not how to achieve order and stability, but rather: what can I live with? (shrink)

Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants (...) are aligned, not competition problems in which individual interests compete with group interests. In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems result largely from “between-group” dynamics. (shrink)

The constitutions of many nations have been explicitly or implicitly founded upon principles of the social contract derived from Thomas Hobbes. The Hobbesian egoism at the base of the contract fairly accurately represents the structure of market enterprise. A contractarian analysis may, then, allow for justified or rationally acceptable universal standards to which businesses should conform. This paper proposes general rational restrictions upon multi-national enterprises, and includes a critique of unjustified restrictions recently proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation (...) and Development (OECD). I propose restrictions that may be tighter than the OECD and international law currently demand, because reason requires that the activities of enterprises accord with standards of environmental and governmental sustainability in addition to consortium, national law and international law agreements. I argue that it is justifiable that indictments may be presented by a citizen or a government against the local arm of a multinational enterprise in response to violations committed by an arm within a different country. (shrink)

'. . . this book will be valuable to upper-division and graduate students interested in the validity of SC theories.'-PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE.

Social contract thought has always contained multiple and mutually conflicting lines of argument; the minimalist contractarianism so influential today represents the weaker of two main constellations of claims. I make the case for a Kantian contract theory that emphasizes the bedrock principle of consent of the governed instead of the mere heuristic device of the exit from the state of nature. Such a shift in emphasis resolves two classic difficulties: tradi- tional contract theory’s ahistorical presumption of a pre-political settlement, (...) and its impossibly high demands on citizens seeking to practice self-rule. Kant’s solutions to these problems of property rights and citizenship are found in his political works, rather than the ethical works through which Kant’s political theory is usually interpreted. (shrink)

This paper argues that Rousseau’s lawgiver is best thought of as a fictional teacher of peoples. It is fictional as it reflects an idea that is entertained despite its contradictory nature, and it is contradictory in the sense that it describes ‘an undertaking beyond human strength and, to execute it, an authority that amounts to nothing’ (II.7; 192). Rousseau conceives of the social contract as a necessary device for enabling the transferal of individual power to the body politic, for (...) subsuming individual wills under the general will, and for aligning the good of the individual with the common good. For the social contract to be valid, however, it needs to be preceded by a desire to belong to a moral community that can induce people to join willingly, and that will grant legitimacy to the laws established. If the social contract is the machinery that makes the body politic function, the lawgiver is ‘the mechanic who invents the machine’ (II.7; 191). In this paper we will look closer at the pedagogical functions of Rousseau’s mythical lawgiver by first examining the relationship between the social contract, the general will and the lawgiver. Then, we aim to flesh out a pedagogical understanding of the figure of the lawgiver by way of the two educational dimensions of accommodation and transformation. Finally, we will argue for the importance of understanding Rousseau’s lawgiver as a fictional device allowing for the fundamental and enduring educational task of balancing between the preservation and renewal of society. (shrink)

The article presents a basic perception regarding social contract theory which is considered to be one of the most well-known and influential theories in western political philosophy. By exploring the concepts of social contract theory suggested by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, an attempt is made to reveal various features and characteristics of the natural state. The article discusses the general description of the state of nature as well as the process of establishing a social contract as (...) a means of formation of civil society. (shrink)

Hobbes postulates a social contract to formalize our collective transition from the state of nature to civil society. The prisoner’s dilemma challenges both the mechanics and the outcome of that thought experiment. The incentives for reneging are supposedly strong enough to keep rational persons from cooperating. This paper argues that the prisoner’s dilemma undermines a position Hobbes does not hold. The context and parameters of the social contract steer it safely between the horns of the dilemma. Specifically, in (...) a setting as hostile as the state of nature, Hobbes’s emphasis on self-interest places a premium on survival, and thereby on adaptability, which then promotes progressive concessions toward peaceful coexistence. This transforms the relevant model of rationality from utility maximization to utility satisficing, thus favoring the pursuit of a mutually satisfactory outcome over that of the best personal outcome. The difference not only obviates the prisoner’s dilemma but also better approximates the state of nature while leaving a viable way out. (shrink)

In this study, I demonstrated that there is a corporate social contract between firms and their host communities. The implication is that the idea of the social contract places corporate social responsibility (CSR) on a conditional pivot, whereby the host communities have to fulfil their own side of the contract in order to merit CSR projects. I examined the implication of the social contract for corrupt and unaccountable host communities. I based my analysis on two philosophical (...) frameworks, namely: one, Constructive Approach CSR (CA-CSR), and two, Restorative Approach CSR (RA-CSR). CA-CSR is hinged on the deontological and utilitarian moral frameworks, while RA-CSR is based on the restorative justice framework. Further, I developed ‘CSR Calculus’ (V = f1+n + K) to determine the value of CSR-due for a host community, in response to Milton Friedman questions of arbitrariness in the formulation of CSR projects. I also demonstrated how the CSR Calculus can be applied to determine the value of CSR owed communities by Micro, Small and Medium scale Enterprises (MSMEs). Finally, I used the ethic ‘leave a better community’ derived from the Annang proverb – Assidsip ye Akwot-kwot ete yak mfin ami afon akan mkpong (Assidsip and Akwot-kwot say make today better than yesterday) to signpost the corporate social contract and demonstrated why it is essential for every firm to commission and decommission its operations in socially responsible manner such that it can bequeath a better future society. (shrink)

Attempts to justify the special moral status of human beings over other animals face a well-known objection: the challenge of marginal cases. If we attempt to ground this special status in the unique rationality of humans, then it becomes difficult to see why nonrational humans should be treated any differently than other, nonhuman animals. We respond to this challenge by turning to the social contract tradition. In particular, we identify an important role for the concept of recognition in attempts (...) to secure rights through a social contract. Recognition, which involves identifying with or seeing ourselves as others, is the key to establishing the scope of justice, and we argue that this scope extends to all humans—even the so-called marginal cases—but not to other animals. If this is correct, then we have a principled reason for why all humans have certain rights that other animals lack. (shrink)

Nearly everyone agrees that sexual exploitation occurs and that, when it does, it is morally wrong. However, there is substantial disagreement over what constitutes sexual exploitation and why it is wrong. Is sex between freely consenting adults ever exploitative? Is prostitution always exploitative? What features of sexually exploitative interactions lead us to regard them as morally wrong? And if sexual exploitation is morally wrong, what should be done about it?These are not new questions for the social philosopher. However, recent (...) criticisms of social contract theory may lead us to wonder whether contractarianism has the resources to criticize important cases of sexual exploitation—particularly prostitution. Some liberals have defended prostitution “in principle,” arguing that when prostitution is truly consensual, there is nothing wrong with it. This is called “sound prostitution.” Indeed, in cases where the parties to a sexual exchange are both competent adults, liberals and libertarians have a difficult time criticizing it, since to do so runs the risk of imposing a local and historically specific sexual ideal on members of society who explicitly reject it or else suggests that the prostitutes and their clients are not really competent agents. (shrink)

The two justificatory roles of the social contract are establishing whether or not a state is legitimate simpliciter and establishing whether any particular individual is politically obligated to obey the dictates of its governing institutions. Rawls's theory is obviously designed to address the first role but less obviously the other. Rawls does offer a duty-based theory of political obligation that has been criticized by neo-Lockean A. John Simmons. I assess Simmons's criticisms and the possible responses that could be made (...) to them, including those offered by Samuel Freeman. I conclude they rest on a Rawlsian equivocation and ultimately fail. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of (...) beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

(Early) Modern social contract theories reject the idea that legal and political institutions are grounded in an alleged natural ordering or hierarchy of human beings, and instead argue that only government by a public (and not private) authority can fulfil the idea of justice as freedom and equality for all. To be authoritative and not just powerful, governing institutions must be shared as ours in this irreducible sense. I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful freedom brilliantly transforms (...) this tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory—his accounts of human nature (“moral anthropology”) and historical societies (“the principle of politics”)—as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception not only of rightful external freedom but of rightful human freedom in particular societies—with their histories—on planet Earth. With these arguments at hand, we can also better appreciate the importance of realizing that the four possible political conditions for Kant—anarchy, barbarism, despotism, and republic—are ideas of reason, which means that they are never perfectly realized. Hence, historical societies we are not either in the state of nature or in civil society. In addition, in historical societies founded on principles of freedom, there are pockets of injustice or pockets that are devoid of justice that can only be captured by means of one of the three political ideas that are not constitutive of the republican legal-political framework. Kant’s four ideas therefore give us more tools with which to capture the nature of different political forces and challenges facing us in our historical societies. (shrink)

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity for computational social science research at scale. Building upon prior explorations of LLM agent design, our work introduces a simulated agent society where complex social relationships dynamically form and evolve over time. Agents are imbued with psychological drives and placed in a sandbox survival environment. We conduct an evaluation of the agent society through the lens of Thomas Hobbes's seminal Social Contract (...) Theory (SCT). We analyze whether, as the theory postulates, agents seek to escape a brutish "state of nature" by surrendering rights to an absolute sovereign in exchange for order and security. Our experiments unveil an alignment: Initially, agents engage in unrestrained conflict, mirroring Hobbes's depiction of the state of nature. However, as the simulation progresses, social contracts emerge, leading to the authorization of an absolute sovereign and the establishment of a peaceful commonwealth founded on mutual cooperation. This congruence between our LLM agent society's evolutionary trajectory and Hobbes's theoretical account indicates LLMs' capability to model intricate social dynamics and potentially replicate forces that shape human societies. By enabling such insights into group behavior and emergent societal phenomena, LLM-driven multi-agent simulations, while unable to simulate all the nuances of human behavior, may hold potential for advancing our understanding of social structures, group dynamics, and complex human systems. (shrink)

The contemporary political philosopher John Rawls considers himself to be part of the social contract tradition of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, but not of the tradition of Locke's predecessor, Thomas Hobbes. Call the Hobbesian tradition interest-based, and the Lockean tradition right-based, because it assumes that there are irreducible moral facts which the social contract can assume. The primary purpose of Locke's social contract is to justify the authority of the state over its citizens despite (...) the fact that those citizens are naturally free and equal. I assume that this task is of central importance to all right-based social contract theories: in chapter one I lay out the general problems faced by all contract theories, and in chapter two, three and four I examine in depth the accounts of political obligation offered by Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls. I conclude that all members of the right-based social contract tradition fail to provide an account of obligation that can explain the bond between a citizen and her state. (shrink)

Artificially intelligent (AI) technologies are increasingly being used in many workplaces. It is recognised that there are ethical dimensions to the ways in which organisations implement AI alongside, or substituting for, their human workforces. How will these technologically driven disruptions impact the employee–employer exchange? We provide one way to explore this question by drawing on scholarship linking Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the psychological contract (PC). Using ISCT, we show that the macrosocial contract’s ethical AI norms of (...) beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and explicability can feed into national- and organisational-level microsocial contracts. We also outline the role of employees’ technology frames in this process. We then use an illustrative example to demonstrate how this multilevel normative background helps to inform the content of individuals’ PCs in the context of working with AI technologies. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to (...) that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states. (shrink)

"In 'Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition' Professor Hampton undertakes an "extensive examination" of Hobbes's argument, primarily as stated in Leviathan, for the institutionof an absolute sovereign. Hampton, however, is concerned to accomplish more than "a description or explication" of Hobbes's political philosophy. Rather, it is her intention to develop a "rational reconstruction" of Hobbes's argument.... 'Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition' is an important and valuable contribution to the study of Hobbes's political philosophy. Throughout this work one (...) acquires new and illuminating insights into Hobbes's argument and its contemporary significance. ... it is essential reading for all those who are seriously concerned to come to grips with Hobbes's social contract theory. Hobbes scholar and political theorist alike will learn a great deal from it.". (shrink)

I argue that both Hobbes and Spinoza rely on a pivot epicurean idea to form their conceptions of the social contract, namely, the idea that the human acts by calculating their utility. However, Hobbes and Spinoza employ this starting principle in different ways. For Hobbes, this only makes sense if the calculation of utility is regulated by fear as the primary political emotion. For Spinoza, there is no primary emotion and the entire construction of the social contract relies (...) on how the calculation of utility is carried out. I argue that this conception of the social contract leads Spinoza to espouse a radical position about the political, which has been overlooked by those like Antonio Negri who read Spinoza as a radical democrat. (shrink)

Resumo: Uma das características comuns dos primeiros filósofos modernos da Europa Ocidental é a ênfase na liberdade e na igualdade. Os filósofos desse período buscavam respostas para “o que é liberdade e igualdade?” e transformaram a liberdade e a igualdade em direitos humanos fundamentais. De John Locke a Montesquieu e Jean Jacques Rousseau, todos consideram a liberdade e a igualdade como direitos naturais do ser humano. O conceito de liberdade e igualdade de Rousseau é refletido em O Contrato Social. (...) No início desse trabalho, ele comentou, com uma famosa frase de abertura: “O homem nasce livre, mas está em toda parte acorrentado.” Esse é o argumento fundamental para dar uma visão única de liberdade e igualdade. Dentro do escopo do artigo, o autor se concentra em analisar seus pontos de vista sobre liberdade e igualdade, em muitos aspectos diferentes - liberdade e igualdade, no estado de natureza, liberdade e igualdade, na sociedade civil, e como alcançar a liberdade e a igualdade - apresentando, assim, os valores e as limitações de seus pontos de vista sobre liberdade e igualdade. (shrink)

There is a great deal of room for misunderstanding in the pages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work. His prose is not as weighed down by jargon as Heidegger’s or as difficult to wade through as Hegel’s — by all accounts his writing is easy to parse! And yet, at times, his writing seems to leave too much up in the air. As such, his work has been both a guiding star for the political left and decried as a wolf in sheep’s (...) clothing. Much of this disparity in opinion can be traced back to a common concern that Rousseau’s attempt to create a basis for legitimate political power seems to take place at the expense of individual freedom. But this raises a question: What is freedom for Rousseau? (shrink)

Given the fact of moral disagreement, theories of state neutrality which rely on moral premises will have limited application, in that they will fail to motivate anyone who rejects the moral premises on which they are based. By contrast, contractarian theories can be consistent with moral scepticism, and can therefore avoid this limitation. In this paper, I construct a contractarian model which I claim is sceptically consistent and includes a principle of state neutrality as a necessary condition. The principle of (...) neutrality which I derive incorporates two conceptions of neutrality which have usually been thought of as distinct and incompatible. I argue that contractarianism gives us a unified account of these concep- tions. Ultimately, the conclusion that neutrality can be derived without violating the constraint established by moral scepticism turns out to rely on an assumption of equal precontractual bargaining power. I do not attempt to defend this assumption here. If the assumption cannot be defended in a sceptically consistent fashion, then the argument for neutrality given here is claimed to be morally minimal, rather than fully consistent with moral scepticism. (shrink)

The psychological contract refers to the implicit and subjective beliefs regarding a reciprocal exchange agreement, predominantly examined between employees and employers. While contemporary contract research is investigating a wider range of exchanges employees may hold, such as with team members and clients, it remains silent on a rapidly emerging form of workplace relationship: employees’ increasing engagement with technically, socially, and emotionally sophisticated forms of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies. In this paper we examine social robots (also termed humanoid robots) as (...) likely future psychological contract partners for human employees, given these entities transform notions of workplace technology from being a tool to being an active partner. We first overview the increasing role of robots in the workplace, particularly through the advent of sociable AI, and synthesize the literature on human–robot interaction. We then develop an account of a human-social robot psychological contract and zoom in on the implications of this exchange for the enactment of reciprocity. Given the future focused nature of our work we utilize a thought experiment, a commonly used form of conceptual and mental model reasoning, to expand on our theorizing. We then outline potential implications of human-social robot psychological contracts and offer a range of pathways for future research. (shrink)

In The Libertarian Idea, Jan Narveson explains his interpretation of social contract theory this way: "The general idea of this theory is that the principles of morality are (or should be) those principles for directing everyone's conduct which it is reasonable for everyone to accept. They are the rules that everyone has good reason for wanting everyone to act on, and thus to internalize in himself or herself, and thus to reinforce in the case of everyone." It is plain, (...) here, that Narveson believes that social contract is to provide justification -- a foundation, in fact -- for 'the principles of morality'. The burden assumed in this essay is to examine how far Narveson has succeeded in making this foundational claim plausible. (shrink)

There appears to be a tension between two commitments in liberalism. The first is that citizens, as rational agents possessing dignity, are owed a justification for principles of justice. The second is that members of society who do not meet the requirements of rational agency are owed justice. These notions conflict because the first commitment is often expressed through the device of the social contract, which seems to confine the scope of justice to rational agents. So, contractarianism seems to (...) ignore the justice claims of the severely cognitively impaired. To solve this problem, Martha Nussbaum proposes the capabilities approach. The justifiability condition, on this approach, is met by the idea of overlapping consensus. This essay argues that overlapping consensus cannot meet liberalism’s justifiability condition, nor is it more inclusive of the cognitively impaired. Therefore, we have reason to retain the contract device and look for another way to ensure that liberalism respects the justice claims of all. (shrink)

From antiquity to date, communal clashes, inter tribal even to global crisis of war is antecedented by penetration of ill-will, unfair sharing formula of human and natural resources by a privileged few resulting in high social, economic and political acrimony hence, the growing calls to reframe the politics of poverty reduction and social protection in particular, in terms of extending the ‘social contract’ to the poorest groups as people are getting increasingly aware of injustice. This premise is (...) on the widening gap between the rich and poor on daily bases. With the increase of awareness, knowledge, technology and the advent of post-modernist era, the quest for social justice has heightened. Even communism and democracy attempt to offer social justice to its natives. Communism states that humans are free to engage in any kind of occupation and express ourselves freely without government interference, unlike the alienated labour society of the capitalist industry: this for communism is social Justice, while democracy thinks equality before law and power to its natives is social justice. All through the era of Philosophy, Philosophers differ on the definition, and what constitute social justice. Until now, there is no unifying explanation on what social justice is and consists of. This paper tends to look into the history of social Justice and different philosophers from different epochs. It also tried to expose the problems inherent in the definition and what constitute social justice, and cautioned that complimentary imperative should be employ to curtail human egoistic tendency that aids social injustice. (shrink)

Global society issues are putting increasing pressure on both small and large organizations to communicate ethically at all levels. Achieving this requires social skills beyond the choice of language or vocabulary and relies above all on individual social responsibility. Arguments from social contract philosophy and speech act theory lead to consider a communication contract that identifies the necessary individual skills for ethical communication on the basis of a limited number of explicit clauses. These latter are pragmatically binding (...) for all partners involved and help to ensure that the ground rules of cooperative communication are observed within a group or an organization. Beyond promoting ethical communication, the communication contract clarifies how individual discursive behaviour can be constructively and ethically monitored by group leaders in business meetings. A case study which shows what may happen when ground clauses of ethical communication are violated is presented. The conclusions of the study highlights why attempting to respect the communication contract is in the best interest of all partners at all levels within any group or organization. (shrink)

Amartya Sen has made a major contribution to the theory of social justice, and of gender justice, by arguing that capabilities are the relevant space of comparison when justice-related issues are considered. This article supports Sen's idea, arguing that capabilities supply guidance superior to that of utility and resources (the view's familiar opponents), but also to that of the social contract tradition, and at least some accounts of human rights. But I argue that capabilities can help us to (...) construct a normative conception of social justice, with critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities as the most important ones to protect. Sen's "perspective of freedom" is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad. Before the approach can offer a valuable normative gender perspective, we must make commitments about substance. (shrink)

Michel Serres’s proposal to extend the social contract to a natural contract has been met with criticism and misunderstanding. In this article, I would like to respond to common criticisms by reconsidering two central related concepts. It is claimed that we cannot represent nature’s interests and therefore cannot come to an agreement, and thus a contract, with nature. However, I will suggest a way out by reinterpreting representation and agreement. I will start with the problem of representation: nature cannot (...) be represented. Specifically, I will present two counterarguments. The first argument is that political representation is always difficult, even in the case of human beings. Representing nature only seems more difficult because we have forgotten the difficulties associated with representing humans. The second argument aims to rethink representation. Representing nature only seems so hard because we tend to follow a cognitive understanding of representation, as if representation is about representing the ideas of the represented party. Instead, following Michael Saward, I propose an alternative understanding of representation as a game of representative claims and counterclaims: political representation is about claiming to speak on behalf of a referent and then allowing that referent to respond to that claim. Then I turn to the problem of agreement. A natural contract seems difficult because it is hard to imagine what it would mean for nature to agree to a particular proposal. To counter this, I turn to the notion of symbiosis, found in the work of Serres. A natural contract, I will argue, need not be a contract of consensus or synthesis. The alternative is a contract of symbiosis, which does not require all parties to have a common understanding of the situation. Instead, it allows for an agreement in which all parties have their own interests and definition of the situation. In this sense, a natural contract can make sense if it is understood as a contract in which symbiosis is achieved through political representation based on a game of claims and counterclaims. (shrink)

Academic integrity is an essential pillar of any educational system. It is defined as acting in a manner consistent with the values and accepted standards of ethical practices in teaching, learning, and scholarship (Fishman, 2015). Contract cheating, or ghostwriting, is currently one of the most severe violations of academic integrity. It involves students engaging a third party, usually an online essay writing service, to complete their academic works on their behalf (Draper et al., 2021). Some of these services offer pre-written (...) essays, whereas others offer bespoke custom-written essays. According to the academic literature, the advent of the internet and digital technologies underlay this rapid deterioration of academic integrity (Ison, 2020; Lancaster & Clarke, 2014). Different learning environments, such as face-to-face (i.e., a learning environment involving the physical presence of both instructor and students) and online web-based (i.e., teaching mode that takes place partially or entirely over the internet), have been shown to affect academic integrity in different ways (Eshet et al., 2021). While contract cheating is common in both conventional face-to-face (F2F) and online settings, it is more likely to take place in the latter (Lancaster & Clarke, 2014; Slade et al., 2018). There are several possible explanations for why online students engage in contract cheating more often than F2F students. In particular, this includes the problem issue of psychological distance, which adversely affects interpersonal relationships; and the problem issue of moral distancing, because the internet can obscure the line between academically honest and dishonest behavior (Sharma & Maleyeff, 2003). These issues were further exacerbated by the sudden shift from F2F to emergency remote teaching (ERT) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Ahsan et al., 2021; Bjelobaba, 2021). Indeed, contract cheating had become a significant COVID-19 side effect for higher education institutions. In contrast to the well-planned F2F or online learning courses, ERTbased courses are not originally designed to be delivered virtually (Fatonia et al., 2020). The chaos brought by the abrupt campus closure and related unexpected transition to ERT provided both the opportunity and the incentive for contract cheating (Hill et al., 2021). Through social media, students have very quickly become fully aware of the possibilities of a wide variety of options to carry out Plagiarism (Bautista et al., 2022). There has been an increase in ways to try to bypass text-matching or text-reuse (i.e., plagiarism) detection systems, for example using micro-spaces, white ink, punctuation, and typos (Abdelhamid et al., 2022). Even though ghostwriters, especially commercial ones, claim their essays are original and therefore cannot be detected using text-matching software, third-party assignments may still contain recycled text (Aitken et al., 2017; Newton & Lang, 2015). Text matching detection software could use these breaches to identify outsourced academic work (Lancaster & Clarke, 2016; Wang & Xu, 2021). This study compared about four thousand term papers written in languages other than Hebrew. (shrink)

As I hope to show in this paper, Fichte’s rejection of traditional social contractarian accounts of human social relations is related to his rejection of the search for a criterion, or external standard, by which we might measure our knowledge in epistemology. More specifically, Fichte’s account of the impossibility of a normative social contract (as traditionally construed) is related to his account of the impossibility of our knowing things as they might be “in themselves,” separate from and (...) independent of our own activity in knowing them. Addressing the question of whether we finite human knowers can ever transcend the limits of our own consciousness, Fichte argues that Hume was not sufficiently critical: “…the Humean system holds open the possibility that we might someday be able to go beyond the boundary of the human mind, whereas the Critical system proves that such progress is absolutely impossible, and it shows that the thought of a thing possessing existence and specific properties in itself and apart from any faculty of representation is a piece of whimsy, a pipe dream, a nonthought.” In a very real sense, then, Fichte aims to “out-Hume” Hume on the question of whether we can ever know “things-in-themselves” or an external criterion for testing our knowledge. That is, Fichte goes beyond Hume and insists on the necessary – and not merely contingent – character of our ignorance of so-called things-in-themselves (i.e., things that supposedly exist antecedent to and independent of our consciousness of them). But unlike Hume, Fichte argues that radical skepticism regarding all possible knowledge of things-in-themselves does not undermine – but actually confirms and sustains – our belief in the emancipatory power of reason. (shrink)

In this contribution, I advocate diminishing the vision of marriage as an isolated and perfectly free choice between two individuals in love, in order to unseat the extent to which students resist the view that marriage is, among other things, a social contract. I summarize views of Immanuel Kant and Claudia Card, then describe my class presentation of the social significance of marriage. I conclude that students at an individualistic and self-creating point in their lives can be under-appreciative (...) of what their public avowals mean to others, and marriage, in one sense, is indeed public. (shrink)

We give a brief overview of several recent strands of speech-act theory, and then survey some issues in social and political philosophy can be profitably understood in speech-act-theoretic terms. Our topics include the social contract, the law, the creation and reinforcement of social norms and practices, silencing, and freedom of speech.

John Rawls was a major 20th-century political philosopher, and his work was animated by his loathing of the fact that many of the circumstances of human lives were due to fortune. Why should there be inequalities among men, he asked, that were produced by mere blind luck? To support his intuition, he came up with a version of social contract theory built around the device of the "original position." We imagine that people gather up for a discussion of what (...) social institutions are best, but they forget, in order not to be swayed by their own personal interests, who they are in the actual society. They do not know their religion, social position, wealth and income, their particular ends, or anything else that might prejudice their judgment. Under this veil of ignorance, they – or rather the philosopher who is shattered into numerous ghostly persons – seek to come to an agreement regarding the just basic structure of society. This book demolishes Rawls' every argument in support of his egalitarianism and shows that the original position, to the extent that it is not completely sterile, outputs libertarianism and laissez-faire capitalism. It defends the view of justice as either a virtue or a legal system that promotes harmony and progress in human affairs. (shrink)

A short presentation of Rawl's theory of justice and its revision in 'Political Liberalism' with an overview of criticism by Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, Alan Buchanan, Amartya Sen and John Harsanyi.

While the importance of social norms for shaping and transforming communities is uncontested, their nature and normativity are controversial. Most recent theorists take social norms to arise if members hold certain attitudes, such as expectations on others, perhaps along with certain behaviours. Yet attitudes do not create norms, let alone social norms or social normativity. Social norms are instead ‘made’: through a social process. Social norming processes are special communication processes, often non-verbal and (...) informal. We present different versions of a process-based account of social norms and social normativity. The process-based view brings social norms closer to legal norms, as processes represent social ‘acts’, just as laws and contracts arise through acts rather than mere attitudes, for instances acts of voting or signing. (shrink)

Birth mothers usually have a moral right to parent their newborns in virtue of a mutual attachment formed, during gestation, between the gestational mother and the fetus. The attachment is formed, in part, thanks to the burdens of pregnancy, and it serves the interest of the newborn; the gestational mother, too, has a powerful interest in the protection of this attachment. Given its justification, the right to parent one's gestated baby cannot be transferred at will to other people who would (...) wish to function as social parents of the child in question. This indicates that surrogacy contracts are illegitimate, and therefore should be void. (shrink)

In his 'Contrat social', § 2.1, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that the general will alone can steer the forces of the state towards the end for which it was instituted, i.e., the common good. The argument's logical structure is more intricate than it seems at first glance. And the intricacy appears to be deliberate. Rousseau's authorial strategy is designed to evoke the reader's voice in articulating the fundamentals of politics.