“So far, you haven't actually said what a social contract is, so it's hard to attack your definition. I've attacked, and destroyed, all the available definitions, which is the best I can do under the circumstances. The burden of proof is on you to say what they're supposed to be, as the first step toward proving that one exists. When you do, I'll smash your definition, sending you back to square one. Until you do, any statement about "social contracts" will essentially be begging the question.”
Smash these:
an actual or hypothetical contract providing the legitimate basis of sovereignty and civil society and of the rights and duties constituting the role of citizen. The contract can be agreed between people and a proposed sovereign or among the people themselves.
agreement among all the people in a society to give up part of their freedom to a government in exchange for protection of natural rights. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were two European political philosophers who wrote about this concept.
A theory on how government and societies began. Contractarians hold that societies were formed by the consent of the populations of various areas who decided, for whatever reasons (these vary from philosopher to philosopher) that it would be to their mutual advantage to band together and cooperate.
This is a core component of the liberal tradition. The social contract, which has its roots in earlier feudal traditions, is used by liberal theorists like Hobbes and Locke to define the conditions under which people will leave the state of nature. People living in the state of nature find at certain point that they can continue living in the state of nature. ...
an implicit agreement among people that results in the organization of society; individual surrenders liberty in return for protection
Social contract is a phrase used in philosophy, political science, and sociology to denote a real or hypothetical agreement within a state regarding the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens, or more generally a similar concord between a group and its members. All members within a society are assumed to agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within the society.
Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Social Contract greatly differed from that of Thomas Hobbes. For Hobbes, the contract was an agreement between society and its government. For Rousseau, it was an agreement between individuals to create a society and a government. Like John Locke, Rousseau believed that a government should come from the consent of the governed. ...
An agreement among the members of an organized society or between the governed and the government defining and limiting the rights and duties of each.
Social contract theory (or contractarianism) is a concept used in philosophy, political science and sociology to denote an implicit agreement within a state regarding the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens, or more generally a similar concord between a group and its members, or between individuals. All members within a society are assumed to agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within the society without violating the contract; such violation would signify an attempt to return to the state of nature. Thomas Hobbes (1651), John Locke (1689) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) are the most famous philosophers of contractarianism, which is the theoretical groundwork of liberalism and democracy.
And when you smash them, please do so without offering an approximation or imitation of the definition, smashing that and then claiming to have smashed the original.
I told you you were going to have other things to do.
For tpaine: If he declines to “smash” for me because his post was to you, I respectfully request you cut and paste the above definitions and send them to him.
I meant to ping you on this.
OK, this definition explicitly says a social contract is a contract. A contract, in turn, is "An agreement formed by an exchange of promises in which the promise of one party is consideration supporting the promise of the other party." This is contradictory, because the citizen does not in fact exchange any promises.
The definition is also faulty on the grounds that there's no such thing as a "hypothetical" agreement. How do two people "hypothetically" agree?
agreement among all the people in a society to give up part of their freedom to a government in exchange for protection of natural rights.
This again says that a "social contract" is an agreement. Yet it binds "all the people," even though they never actually agree to it--as tpaine said, my parents supposedly agreed for me. But no, they didn't either! My grandparents agreed for my parents and for me... So once again a social contract is an agreement that I become a party to without actually agreeing to anything.
A theory on how government and societies began. Contractarians hold that societies were formed by the consent of the populations of various areas who decided, for whatever reasons (these vary from philosopher to philosopher) that it would be to their mutual advantage to band together and cooperate.
I answered this definition already: no such decision process explains the origin of society. Rather, tribal social structure is common to all apes, and a family-based social order is common to all placental mammals. Government (e.g., by the alpha male--whether his name is "Bongo" or "Nebuchadnezzer") and society (i.e., the tribe) predated even rational thought itself, and was therefore certainly not the product of such a contractual process.
an implicit agreement among people that results in the organization of society; individual surrenders liberty in return for protection
An implicit agreement is created when I do something indicative of my consent. For example, issuing an invitation. This implicit agreement was apparently agreed to by my act of being born--but a newborn can't consent to anything. The agreement is therefore not implicit at all, but externally imposed.
All members within a society are assumed to agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within the society.
Already addressed more than once: nobody has the authority to tell me that I must accept a contract against my will or else leave the country. Some people claim they have the authority, but they claim that they got it from the social contract which I claim they don't have the authority to impose on me. They claim they can impose it on me, of course, by virtue of the social contract...
For Hobbes, the contract was an agreement between society and its government.
Thank you; you stand corrected.
For Rousseau, it was an agreement between individuals to create a society and a government.
Once again, a social contract is supposedly an agreement, but I'm bound by it whether or not I agree. If I disagree, the same people trying to force this contract upon me insist that I vacate my property and leave the country. Their authority to do so comes from the "social contract," which I never agreed to in the first place...
Like John Locke, Rousseau believed that a government should come from the consent of the governed. ...
This phrase, "the consent of the governed", is also self-contradictory: it implies that all subjects of government consent to that government. In reality, no such consent is even requested; anyone who declares himself non-consenting, and acts contrary to the orders of government, will be imprisoned. This, like an "agreement among all the people", is a fiction, because the people do not in fact all agree.
Social contract theory (or contractarianism) is a concept used in philosophy, political science and sociology to denote an implicit agreement within a state regarding the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens, or more generally a similar concord between a group and its members, or between individuals. All members within a society are assumed to agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within the society without violating the contract
Each of these points has been answered earlier in this post.
I told you you were going to have other things to do.
Yawn. Did you know when you posted them, that you were regurgitating multiple versions of the two definitions I'd already debunked? Or did you honestly think these were different in some way?