Social contract theory has never referred to an actual, material, morally binding agreement. No social contract theorist has argued this. Rather, it is a very common misconception and mischaracterization of the argument. I'd recommend reading the above posted articles that develop this contractualist view. Keep in mind that you're addressing a strawman.

No human has ever or will ever exist in a vacuum. The tabula rasa foundational approach to ethics is fatally flawed, in that these presuppositions of "well if I were a singular person I would want XYZ" are 1. skewed by the value system you actually developed by whatever point in your life you're currently at and 2. literal impossibilities and not only do not but cannot reflect humanity.

Every person at minimum has one parent, and humans evolved to exist in communal groups. Any approach to ethics that starts with "in a vacuum" and ignores the simple fact that all persons have social connections from the instant they're born is starting from the wrong place.

The whole notion of “externalities” — recipients of one’s actions that can be safely disregarded and walked away from without consequence, troubles me deeply, and very much puts the “dismal” in “dismal science”. We clearly evolved in a world where externalities abounded, and could be counted on. Is our species capable of handling a world where there aren’t, and cannot be, any externalities? I hope so, but I’m not at all sure.

The only system that is coherent is then free grabbing of everything. That is the only real ex ante view to how societies necessarily begin.

But still one gets eventually shot for doing that?

How you make a theory of justice in this question begging framework of having legal right to ”protective violence” and gatekeeping all of the resources?

Locke like kant is both moral realist and contractarian.

Everyone can grab resources so far others can do the same. It is pareto optimal truth (realism) so it can function as something what people agree not to violate (contract)

The problem with that argument is that it doesn’t account for the fact that there are differences in opinions on what rights even are. If rights simply existed in a cosmological sense then there should be concrete ways to prove that one right exists while another doesn’t. If it’s just “something you have” without further explanation, then the assertions you make about rights have no reason behind them. It’s just declaring by fiat that a right exists, without providing any argument for why it exists. Thus it’s an argument from opinion, not an argument from evidence. The argument is literally “it exists because it exists” which is woefully inadequate.

The same bullshit from 17th century. Must preserve the capitalism from the bourgeois own theory

>I was specifically referring to inter-imaginatory concepts, and in this sense you are replying to a strawman.

So all one has to do is imagine a different set of rights (say the right to do wrong) and then you have no rights. All this is is "what if we both happened to imagine the same rights?" But what if we don't? What if we had the conflict of John and Bill as discussed in the piece? Do we then not have rights?

I argue that we still do, regardless of our imaginations, that we have rights based on the principles of the social contract. I argue for its meta-ethical basis and its moral authority here and here.

I'd recommend re-reading. I argue that we develop reasonable principles and apply them to specific facts create rights. Their application specifies what these rights are (I provide this linked articleas an example, to show how constitutional principles applied based on reason, create rights). This resolves the specification problem.

And the prioritization problem can be resolved by examining the meta-principles of certain rights (this linked article is provided as an example of how our moral/legal rules of consent are based on meta-ethical principles).

> If they come from our imagination, they have no moral weight

All moral concept comes from our imagination. It is a purely inter-imaginary concept. Are you saying that morality itself has no moral weight, because it does not exist outside of the mind? Morality has consequence in reality because we act upon it, but that does not make it any less imaginary than Harry Potter.

> Your imagination can't make anyone else do anything, like respecting your entitlements.

This is simply wrong, especially when you consider that I said "our imagination" and not "my imagination". I was specifically referring to inter-imaginatory concepts, and in this sense you are replying to a strawman. However, let met offer two rebuttals, one to the straw man argument you are making(1), and another as if you had dealt with my actual argument(2).

1 - I imagine myself entitled to own a pet cat, and I have this pet cat in my posession. You pick up the pet cat that I imagine myself owning, and start to leave. Imagining my entitlements to be disrespected, I act upon those imaginary concepts by yelling "Drop the cat or I will punch you in the face". You, imagining that being punched in the face is something you do not want, proceed to drop the cat.

There, my imagination just made someone else respect my entitlement. Yes, my imagination did not act directly as if by some form of telepathy, but it imagined a set of noises that did pretty much the same thing. The only physically observable phenomenon were a set of vibrations in the air, and yet by medium of those vibrations my imagination found a way to make the other person imagination imagine a set of very unpleasant consequences to their actions, and made them do something else.

Yes, technically it was my voice - a physical thing - that made someone else do something, but the words to say came from my imagination. If you want to say that the fact that any physical action happened at all disqualifies this argument, I'd liken that a bit to saying that the triceps muscle cannot affect anything because it is in fact my hand that hits you when I punch. Yet, I can concede the fact that this is a semi-valid rebuttal, and to that I'd like to remind you of the fact that it is a rebuttal to a strawman argument that I never made in the first place.

2 - I imagine myself entitled to own a pet cat, and I do have this pet cat in my posession. You also imagine me entitled to own the cat that is currently in my possesion. Both of our imaginations share an acceptance to numerous imaginary concepts, such as ownership, entitlements and so on. In addition, we both imagine that punching someone in the face is an acceptable and likely response to trying to steal someones pet cat. Since we both imagine myself as the owner of the cat in currently in front of us, you imagine that you will be punched in the face if you take it, and so you do not do this.

In this scenario "our" imagination, the imaginary concepts that we both share or our inter-imagination, guided both our actions. You might have wanted to have the cat, but you accepted the inter-imaginary concept of "pet owner" and the consequences of violating certain entitlements that come with that role. Incidentally the cat, a third part in this scenario, almost certainly would not accept being "owned" by anybody, had it understood what this meant. It did not share our inter-imaginary reality, and would have happily gone with anyone that would have fed and petted it.

You've done neither in regards to this specific understanding (or rather, simply changing the meaning of a term) of "social contracts".

Your arguments do not fit the position you're arguing for, as they imply an actual contract and not Lockean rights in a poor disguise.

Listen to "Know Your Rights" by The Clash. They sum it up beautifully. Rights are not consistently nor equitably upheld or defended anyplace on earth or anytime throughout history. Richer, better connected people are more likely to get what they want from the system - period. The rest is just philosophy. Individual philosophy has never, anywhere, been more powerful than wealth or weapons. Collectively, people can achieve anything - with or without philosophy.

I've already addressed why the social contract has moral authority in the above-linked pieces, as well as why I am not a Lockean.

The final section doesn’t say much except that the state doesn’t create rights and the US founding fathers considered rights. Leaving aside that the Bill of Rights was literally and amendment to the Constitution and that several key rights were left out, this doesn’t really answer the question at all, it just asserts that some other people considered the question.

This does not answer the problem. Noting that consent is based on underlying principles doesn't do anything to give authority to hypothetical consent, nor is hypothetical consent the only possible value to base actual consent on.

All you've done is to (again) reduce yourself to a Lockean position in more steps, as the law that you base rights on is agent-independent. And so, the social contract based justifications you give in the article still aren't applicable, and the terminology used is still misappropriated.

https://youtu.be/hGRNUw559SE

I've addressed hypothetical consent here. Summary: You can't have moral principles of actual consent without reference to the social contract, which relies on hypothetical consent. Actual consent depends on hypothetical consent.

For a procedure to create something it must be actual, not hypothetical. If what you call a "social contract" is nothing but an expression of reason, then, again, that's just a Lockean view and the term "social contract" is misappropriated.

Like I said before, your position is self-inconsistent as it tries to use social contract based justifications without including an actual social contract, but simply "something else" (rationality) that you use the words "social contract" for.

>I’ll have to sound like a broken record, but rights derive from reason.

Does not really sound like an explanation, because everything a person does is derived from reason (rational or irrational), rights included, which is pretty obvious to anyone who spent a minute thinking about it.

What the whole fuss is about is what right are "real" rights, and no amount of "reasoning" will resolve it, because there is no 'right' of 'wrong' rights.

Rights in society emerge from many people trying to impose those universal rules they believe in on others.

Not discover, create. And there would not be rights outside of this procedure. This is discussed in the article: " it’s reason that leads us to develop the universal moral principles which make up the social contract." And these moral principles are the basis of our rights.

>Just because you do not consent to our criminal law regime doesn’t give one the right to commit crimes.

That's not how it is though. People casually disagree and change criminal law through disobeying it.

Say outlawing being a gay, and demanding "not to break the law" will not fly with people. They will definitely see it as a right to break it.

If your contractual procedure is hypothetical - a thought experiment for the philosopher to discover rights, then your position is simply that moral rights exist in nature, the same as Locke.

I argue that there are no moral facts outside of a hypothetical contractual procedure, Locke argues that there are. That is how I am not a Lockean.

If a factory spews so much pollution that literally the entire planet's air is less fit for breathing, how will you walk away?

There are actions from which it's impossible to walk away.

The social contract is an after-the-fact justification rather than the basis for society.