{"id":674,"date":"2025-03-13T18:56:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T18:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/chapter\/6-3-why-should-we-follow-the-rules\/"},"modified":"2025-03-31T22:39:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T22:39:44","slug":"6-3-why-should-we-follow-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/chapter\/6-3-why-should-we-follow-the-rules\/","title":{"raw":"6.3\u00a0Why\u00a0Should\u00a0We Follow the Rules?","rendered":"6.3\u00a0Why\u00a0Should\u00a0We Follow the Rules?"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n

Recall the conversation between Glaucon and Socrates in Plato\u2019s Republic (see section 3.1). There, the question of why anyone would follow moral rules hinged, according to Glaucon, on whether he\/she would be caught and punished for violating them. Social contract faces similar difficulties in justifying why we should follow the rules of the state.<\/p>\r\n

There are two major problems facing SCT, the first is a lack of clarity concerning the status of the agreement<\/strong> that creates moral rules. Is this supposed to have been a real agreement between real people at some point in the past, or a hypothetical agreement about what people would agree to if they were faced with the task of creating moral rules from scratch. The second problem with has to do with its adequacy as a justification for moral rules in general<\/strong>. Granted that it shows we have a need for such rules, it fails to provide an adequate account of why we should bother to follow the rules when we have constant incentives to cheat.<\/p>\r\n

This first problem\u00a0facing Social Contract Theory has to do with its claim that the authority of the rules of the social game can only be based on the free and willing consent of those under the authority of these rules. If social rules are conventional rules, they can only be binding to those who have freely accepted the restrictions they impose on us. But most of us, who never lived in any situation remotely resembling Hobbes\u2019 state of nature, probably cannot remember ever being asked to endorse a social contract. Instead, we are born into a society with a set of rules already established and taken for granted as legitimate rules and we are asked simply to accept these rules. But then how could these rules really be binding on us if we were never asked whether they fit in with our ideas of what would serve our interests best? There are two standard ways of responding to this question.<\/p>\r\n

1. First, we might say\u00a0that although the social contract was in fact a real historical event establishing a set of conventional moral rules, once these rules have been set in place, they are no longer subject to debate or rejection. Our ancestors who lived in a state of nature were in a unique position to establish a social order and, short of the kind of complete social breakdown that occurs during a civil war or political revolution, subsequent generations have no choice but to accept the rules authorized by the original parties to the social contract. Perhaps subsequent generations can tweak particular details of the rules of the social game, as has definitely happened, for example, concerning relations between men and women in the western world. But the basic rules that result in the creation of the social world in the first place must henceforth be taken as given.<\/p>\r\n

This response is,\u00a0however, unsatisfactory and even threatens to undermine the very thing that seems unique about Social Contract Theory, its claim that social rules are inherently conventional and based on the free choices of those to whom they apply. That is, if only the original parties to the social contract are in a position to accept or reject some set of social rules, then these rules can count as conventional only for them and not for anyone born into a later generation. But this means that the social rules are just as arbitrary for later generations as they would be if given by a particular culture, by God, or by some conception of human nature.<\/p>\r\n

2. The second way\u00a0to answer the question of why moral rules might be binding on us even if we have never explicitly approved of them starts by rejecting the idea that the social contract should be understood as a real historical event. Instead, the contract should be understood as a hypothetical contract reflecting what rules would be acceptable to free and rational agents if they were living in a pre-social state of nature. That is, the Social Contract Theory is to be recast as an idealized set of rules that any free and rational individuals would be logically compelled to accept in order to avoid the general types of problems that would plague their lives in the absence of such rules. Just like physicists idealize in their accounts of the laws of motion by talking about things like frictionless planes and perfectly elastic collisions, us philosophers are licensed to talk about the requirements of free and rational agents in general, regardless of the historical details of their lives since what we are after is an account of the sorts of rules we should accept. This approach is by and large the approach taken by most contemporary philosophers who take Social Contract Theory seriously as a way of justifying social rules philosophically, and it does seem like a reasonable way to proceed.<\/p>\r\n

Thus, let us accept\u00a0that Social Contract Theory is not dependent on the claim that a real agreement is at the basis of currently existing social rules. Instead let us accept, for the sake of argument, that the social contract is a hypothetical device that enables us to talk about what rules would be acceptable to free and rational agents, whoever they happen to be. We can now ask a more difficult question of this theory \u2013 why would free and rational agents accept any rules at all that limit their options in the way moral rules do? Moral rules, we recall, should be understood as rules that might get in the way of self-interest. For example, if there is a moral rule against lying to others, this means that whether it suits us in any given moment to lie is not important because the rule against lying should overrule our immediate interests. We have seen that Social Contract Theory is based on the idea that we can all agree that certain sorts of behavior should be restricted since they tend to lead to chaos if enough people engage in them. Thus, it certainly seems like moral rules have an important role to play in our social lives.<\/p>\r\n

We may wonder, however,\u00a0whether Social Contract Theory goes far enough by pointing out how moral rules can serve our collective interests. What is to prevent us from accepting a set of rules if it does not get in the way of our individual interests but then ignoring the rules whenever it seems to us that it pays to do so? If moral rules are necessitated by the fact that we are essentially self-interested individuals but also need not appeal to anything besides self-interest, doesn\u2019t this make moral rules highly unstable?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

\n

Recall the conversation between Glaucon and Socrates in Plato\u2019s Republic (see section 3.1). There, the question of why anyone would follow moral rules hinged, according to Glaucon, on whether he\/she would be caught and punished for violating them. Social contract faces similar difficulties in justifying why we should follow the rules of the state.<\/p>\n

There are two major problems facing SCT, the first is a lack of clarity concerning the status of the agreement<\/strong> that creates moral rules. Is this supposed to have been a real agreement between real people at some point in the past, or a hypothetical agreement about what people would agree to if they were faced with the task of creating moral rules from scratch. The second problem with has to do with its adequacy as a justification for moral rules in general<\/strong>. Granted that it shows we have a need for such rules, it fails to provide an adequate account of why we should bother to follow the rules when we have constant incentives to cheat.<\/p>\n

This first problem\u00a0facing Social Contract Theory has to do with its claim that the authority of the rules of the social game can only be based on the free and willing consent of those under the authority of these rules. If social rules are conventional rules, they can only be binding to those who have freely accepted the restrictions they impose on us. But most of us, who never lived in any situation remotely resembling Hobbes\u2019 state of nature, probably cannot remember ever being asked to endorse a social contract. Instead, we are born into a society with a set of rules already established and taken for granted as legitimate rules and we are asked simply to accept these rules. But then how could these rules really be binding on us if we were never asked whether they fit in with our ideas of what would serve our interests best? There are two standard ways of responding to this question.<\/p>\n

1. First, we might say\u00a0that although the social contract was in fact a real historical event establishing a set of conventional moral rules, once these rules have been set in place, they are no longer subject to debate or rejection. Our ancestors who lived in a state of nature were in a unique position to establish a social order and, short of the kind of complete social breakdown that occurs during a civil war or political revolution, subsequent generations have no choice but to accept the rules authorized by the original parties to the social contract. Perhaps subsequent generations can tweak particular details of the rules of the social game, as has definitely happened, for example, concerning relations between men and women in the western world. But the basic rules that result in the creation of the social world in the first place must henceforth be taken as given.<\/p>\n

This response is,\u00a0however, unsatisfactory and even threatens to undermine the very thing that seems unique about Social Contract Theory, its claim that social rules are inherently conventional and based on the free choices of those to whom they apply. That is, if only the original parties to the social contract are in a position to accept or reject some set of social rules, then these rules can count as conventional only for them and not for anyone born into a later generation. But this means that the social rules are just as arbitrary for later generations as they would be if given by a particular culture, by God, or by some conception of human nature.<\/p>\n

2. The second way\u00a0to answer the question of why moral rules might be binding on us even if we have never explicitly approved of them starts by rejecting the idea that the social contract should be understood as a real historical event. Instead, the contract should be understood as a hypothetical contract reflecting what rules would be acceptable to free and rational agents if they were living in a pre-social state of nature. That is, the Social Contract Theory is to be recast as an idealized set of rules that any free and rational individuals would be logically compelled to accept in order to avoid the general types of problems that would plague their lives in the absence of such rules. Just like physicists idealize in their accounts of the laws of motion by talking about things like frictionless planes and perfectly elastic collisions, us philosophers are licensed to talk about the requirements of free and rational agents in general, regardless of the historical details of their lives since what we are after is an account of the sorts of rules we should accept. This approach is by and large the approach taken by most contemporary philosophers who take Social Contract Theory seriously as a way of justifying social rules philosophically, and it does seem like a reasonable way to proceed.<\/p>\n

Thus, let us accept\u00a0that Social Contract Theory is not dependent on the claim that a real agreement is at the basis of currently existing social rules. Instead let us accept, for the sake of argument, that the social contract is a hypothetical device that enables us to talk about what rules would be acceptable to free and rational agents, whoever they happen to be. We can now ask a more difficult question of this theory \u2013 why would free and rational agents accept any rules at all that limit their options in the way moral rules do? Moral rules, we recall, should be understood as rules that might get in the way of self-interest. For example, if there is a moral rule against lying to others, this means that whether it suits us in any given moment to lie is not important because the rule against lying should overrule our immediate interests. We have seen that Social Contract Theory is based on the idea that we can all agree that certain sorts of behavior should be restricted since they tend to lead to chaos if enough people engage in them. Thus, it certainly seems like moral rules have an important role to play in our social lives.<\/p>\n

We may wonder, however,\u00a0whether Social Contract Theory goes far enough by pointing out how moral rules can serve our collective interests. What is to prevent us from accepting a set of rules if it does not get in the way of our individual interests but then ignoring the rules whenever it seems to us that it pays to do so? If moral rules are necessitated by the fact that we are essentially self-interested individuals but also need not appeal to anything besides self-interest, doesn\u2019t this make moral rules highly unstable?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"menu_order":11,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-674","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":886,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1226,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/674\/revisions\/1226"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/886"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/674\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppscphi1012ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}