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?
Try something you've never tried before. Try saying what a contract is, what a "social" contract is, and how the Constitution is one. You'll find it eye opening.
-- you've never tried to define "social contract,"
Izzy not that long ago:
So far, you haven't actually said what a social contract is, so it's hard to attack your definition.
-- When you do, I'll smash your definition, sending you back to square one.
--- Here's a pretty good preamble to & definition of a social contract:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Posted at #343.
You made no effort to attack my definition then. -- And I doubt you can now.
#357
Kris comments:
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.
As we see Kris, - Izzy cannot "smash" our Constitution, so he chose to 'answer' your post with another of his rambling diatribes.. -- In which he simply denies that he is bound by Constitutional law.
He's a Lysander Spooner type anarchist.
In his essay 'The Constitution of No Authority' Spooner opens:
"The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation." - "It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago."
Spooner concludes:
"-- Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, ... it is unfit to exist. --"
“Thank you; you stand corrected. “
Where do I stand corrected? Where did I say I agreed with each, any or all of these definitions? I merely offered them up for you to smash. I tried to scan them for relevance but not for agreement.
“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?”
Neither thing was a consideration. You offered to smash and I tried to give you an opportunity. But I might offer rebuttal to your attempts at another time.