Cardellini_Updates t1_j0fvb56 wrote on December 16, 2022 at 9:45 AM

This is idealism.

Start with the realities of life, and then derive principles from it, and then those principles may guide the couse, but they are not nor ever have been the starting point of social being. And, as a result, these built principles are not eternal truths, but ultimately, contingent to the society which produced us, our biological evolution, our state of development. Superstructure atop the base.

If you want a reason to do well, nothing external can provide that. It's an axiomatic assumption to do right by people. That gets the job done much faster. We take axiomatic assumptions to do math. We take axiomatic assumptions to do science. We use them because they get the job done, nothing more, nothing less.

If someone wants to act to harm people, they may be reminded they live in a sea of people, and that this person is dependent upon those people, and they can either respect that, and be respected by us all as our social whole, or they don't, and society owes them no kindness. Our interdependence is a far stronger basis for moral arguments. By starting with the isolated "free" individual, the brain in the cloud, you start with someone who does not exist and who we do not meet. Whatever this imaginary person is compelled to accept will hardly be influential upon the real people.

But otherwise it was a good essay!

contractualist OP t1_j0ia7aj wrote on December 16, 2022 at 9:08 PM

Thank you!

However, if you don't do the work of meta-ethics, normative ethics tends to get sloppy. Terms go undefined and people adopt different normative standards. It's uncommon but necessary to start with first principles before getting into normative and applied ethics. Meta-ethics may be too philosophical and abstract for some, but the current confusion over ethics can be explained by the skipping of this first step.

Cardellini_Updates t1_j0ian7o wrote on December 16, 2022 at 9:11 PM

Conflicting class interests can also lead to rational agents in incompatible formations- their disagreement over the proper course of class society is not confusion, but clarity.

contractualist OP t1_j0idcaq wrote on December 16, 2022 at 9:30 PM

I discuss that here. The social contract needs to be based on reason, rather than power. Class conflict may be useful in getting both sides of an issue and creating more accurate moral conclusions. But this conflict is instrumental.

Cardellini_Updates t1_j0ifvad wrote on December 16, 2022 at 9:47 PM

You could, if you wanted, have a referendum to affirm a social contract. Until we do that, I do not care about the concept, I never consented to these conditions except through my refusal to commit suicide in the face of our indignities (how voluntary)

And, more pressingly, the essay never mentions class. It seems, frankly, suspicious for it to never come up, given the central importance of production and the management of production in our daily life.

I think you aren't being attentive enough to the manner in which you and your consciousness and your capacity for reason are a social product with historically determined characteristics. Much how Aristotle, or our own Founding Fathers, at the top of Slave Societies, could wax poetic about the liberties, while owning people. Were they cruel liars? Were they stupid? No. (Well, the slaves might disgree). At least, not really. But they committed the same error as you do. Really put yourself in their shoes, what do they miss? Probably a few things jump out. Carry forward, to the present, what is it that you might miss?

And if you think we have overcome the brutalities of history, think about how you can buy avocados in winter, and if the guy who plucked them for us is granted the same liberty. That is the water we swim in, which still molds our thought.

Because it's a well written rebuke to Social Contract Theory: David Hume, Of the Original Contract might be up your alley.

https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cofc.edu/dist/8/406/files/2014/09/David-Hume-Of-the-Original-Contract-1kif9ud.pdf (pdf warning)

contractualist OP t1_j0ikcsl wrote on December 16, 2022 at 10:20 PM

I discuss hypothetical vs actual consent here. The contract is based on reason, so if there is a reason for prioritizing someone's identity (like class) to serve as a justification for restricting others, you should provide them.

Cardellini_Updates t1_j0iktyh wrote on December 16, 2022 at 10:23 PM

>The contract is based on reason

Objectively, it isn't. You want it to be. But what binds us in real life isn't. Or was it just emanantly reasonable when we slaughtered millions of muslims in the last two decades? Is decades of blockade on Cuba reasonable? Or our alliance with Saudi Arabia and active contribution to their genocide, over our petroleum concerns? Is it reasonable that people may be bankrupted through no fault of their own, by medical emergency? Or again, that the guy who picks your abundant avocados is not granted his own? That our wealthy buy their politicians? That our planet is being sacrified for fleeting monetary gains? None of this is reason. The obligation is not to law, our obligation must be to break and reshape law in service of a genuine human interest.

>someone's identity (like class)

Class is not an identity. You belong to class regardless of how you think of yourself. The proletarian, working class interest is uniquely singled out because workers actually constitute the majority of global humanity, and is thus the best class interest to serve as a ruling class, as self rule of the class ruling itself.

contractualist OP t1_j0imv2e wrote on December 16, 2022 at 10:38 PM

That's descriptive, the social contract is normative.

Cardellini_Updates t1_j0in7rt wrote on December 16, 2022 at 10:41 PM

And the world as it is, determines the norms we wish to transform it by. That is what I am trying to say to you, again and again.