Social Contract

[thenelli01]

What is a response to this argument: (person a and

A: I never signed a social contract.

B: You never signed that you had to respect people's rights either, but you are expected to do so by government.

A: ...

[Dormin111]

I agree with B. As long as a government follows objective law, it does not need the explicit consent of its citizens.

[FeatherFall]

The short answer is that your rights are not a matter of what any given government expects. You are talking about the justification of government, so you don't talk about what a government expects until you hammer out the fundamentals. Then you can examine an expectation to determine if it is valid.

The "social contract" is a package deal that attempts to conflate consent with force. You "consent" so long as you haven't run screaming from a particular geographic boundary. This "consent" is used as justification to take your property, press you into service as a warrior-slave, etc.

Rights aren't contractual, they do not rely on consent for their validity. This is not to be confused with the fact that you may claim their protection only if you act in accordance with them (they are morally universal, so to speak). Human life requires the use of your mind, force is at odds with the mind, rights are moral principles that define freedom action in a social context (specifically they bar force).

The previous two paragraphs are a very basic presentation of the fundamentals. But now that they are laid out, we can address B's statement. Both parts of which are true. You haven't signed a contract (rights aren't contractual in nature) and a proper government expects you to protect respect them. But the statement does absolutely nothing to address the problems with social contract theory.

Edited March 27, 2013 by FeatherFall

[Nicky]

What is a response to this argument: (person a and

A: I never signed a social contract.

B: You never signed that you had to respect people's rights either, but you are expected to do so by government.

A: ...

You're not expected to do so by the government. The government is expected to retaliate against people who don't.

The government is expected to do so because retaliating against rights violators is moral.

[2046]

The response uses the concept of a "right," which is something that is held as a way in which a person may not be treated regardless of other people's agreement or permission, so it doesn't really seem coherent to say "nobody signed a contract to respect rights." But moreover, a contract itself is justified in terms of rights, so the argument is circular.

[softwareNerd]

When someone says a social contract exists, try figuring out one more level of detail. Since there is no actual literal contract, but only an implicit one, how do we know the exact terms? Do we know it by asking the majority? If so, is there anything to distinguish "social contract" with "unlimited democratic rule".

"Social contract" is a pretty empty concept. It actually tries to grasp at a couple of valid political ideas, but when people use it, they usually mean this: "you have agreed to do whatever the majority say you should do". Since they use it as a polite term for "unlimited majority rule", I would challenge that underlying meaning. If they acknowledge the two terms mean the same thing: you have something concrete to fight them on. If they draw a distinction... then, you'll have to take it from there.

You might find that the other person has a fairly harmless and positive way of filling the vessel of "social contract". He might say:

"No, a majority cannot decide that some minority should be their slaves. The fundamental idea of social-contract is that we noble savages agreed to something that was significantly better than our savage state. We cannot assume that someone would agree to such a thing as slavery."

Most modern people agree that individuals have some rights. The question is: what those rights are and how are we to discover them?

Edited March 28, 2013 by softwareNerd

[Nicky]

The response uses the concept of a "right," which is something that is held as a way in which a person may not be treated regardless of other people's agreement or permission

No, a "right" is a moral concept. It states that a person "ought not to be treated a certain way".

"may not be treated" would imply that rights are rules. They're not rules, they're moral principles.

Laws are rules. Specifically, rules that direct the government's actions. Laws state that the government may not act in a certain way, or must act a certain way. Proper laws state that a government must punish rights violators in a prescribed manner, and may not do anything else.

[2046]

No, a "right" is a moral concept. It states that a person "ought not to be treated a certain way".

"may not be treated" would imply that rights are rules. They're not rules, they're moral principles.

I find your criticism misguided. There is nothing in the foregoing that says rights are not moral principles, nor does the phrasing "may not be treated" necessarily imply otherwise. Moreover, whether rights are deontological rules or hypothetical imperatives is irrelevant to the point of it being incoherent to ask for contractual agreement to rights.

Laws are rules. Specifically, rules that direct the government's actions. Laws state that the government may not act in a certain way, or must act a certain way. Proper laws state that a government must punish rights violators in a prescribed manner, and may not do anything else.

cool story

[Nicky]

I find your criticism misguided. There is nothing in the foregoing that says rights are not moral principles, nor does the phrasing "may not be treated" necessarily imply otherwise.

Sure it does. Moral principles say nothing about what you may or may not do. If something tells you what you may or may not do, then that's not a moral principle.