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A note on discourse ethics and naturalized social contracts

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Abstract

Beginning the first section with Joseph Heath’s criticism on Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, the author clarifies the structure of deontological ethics in its Kantian version and discourse ethics version. He argues that if we are not satisfied with a transcendental inference, we should take a naturalistic approach to the problem of ethics and norms. In the second section, he appreciates the game theoretic approach to the problematic social contract by Brian Skyrms and Kenneth Binmore. As a result of the historical evolution of a society, a naturalistic version of ethics (e.g., Binmore’s empathy equilibrium) comes to reflect historical heritage and then the dominant social structure. In the third section, he offers a scheme of the dual structure of the normative and real dimensions to grasp the problematic areas of the ethical problem. He explains these areas and maintains that a dual-dimension scheme can compensate for the partiality of both the idealist and naturalist directions.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. It was VCASI (Virtual Center for Advanced Studies in Institution) that was presided over by Prof. Aoki and held lively workshops from 2007 to 2011 on the financial aid of the Tokyo Foundation.

  2. See Aoki (2010): chapter 4.

  3. Borrowed from Heath’s paraphrasing in English (Heath 2003, p. 227) In the original text, it is as follows: “daß die Folgen und Nebenwirkungen, die sich jeweils aus ihrer allgemeinen Befolgung für die Befriedigung der Interessen eines jeden Einzelnen (voaussichtlich) ergeben, von allen Betroffenen akzeptiert (und den Auswirkungen der bekannten alternativen Regelungsmöglichkeiten vorgezogen) werden können” (Habermas 2009, Bd. 3, S. 60).

  4. Borrowed from the English paraphrasing by Heath (Heath 2003, p. 212). In the original text, it is as follows: “Der Diskursethik zufolge darf eine Norm nur dann Geltung beanspruchen, wenn alle von ihr möglicherweise Betroffenen als Teilnehmer eines praktischen Diskurses Einverständnis darüber erzielen (bzw. erzielen würden), daß diese Norm gilt” (Habermas 2009, Bd.3, S.60).

  5. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott in 1895 (Kant 2016). In the German original, it is as follows: “Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die Du zugleich wollen kannst, daß sie eine allgemeine Gesetz werde” (5939). “Handle so, als ob die Maxime deiner Hanslung durch deinen Willen zum allgemeinen Naturgesetz werfen sollte” (5944). (Kant 1785, in kindle edition).

  6. Yagi (2001). Here, I use Aij (action of individual i toward other individual j) in place of Dij (domination of individual i over goods j), because the original formulation was invented to explain the relations of approval of ownership. See its introduction later in Sect. 3.

  7. The case of the stag hunt and hare hunt has its origin in Rousseau’s Origin of Inequality (Rousseau 1755). In this case, hunters facing two Nash equilibria (Stag–Stag and Hare–Hare) are tempted to choose the latter to avoid a bad result.

  8. Skyrms counted Binmore and Robert Sugden (Sugden 1986) as fellow Humeans in the direction of naturalizing social contracts (Skyrms 2012, p. 108).

  9. In my previous article (Yagi 2001), I introduced two types of agents, the autonomous and the conformist, and followed the emergence of a general rule (law) in the normative dimension and a general media (money) in the real dimension, respectively.

  10. The social contract as viewed in evolutionary social science covers all four areas of the proposed scheme. We should note that the two types of social contract that Rousseau described in his two treatises (Rousseau 1755, 1762) entail the transmutation of the individual itself. While in the social contract that proceeds as civilization changes individuals from natural humans to civilized humans, in the ideal renovation of the social contract, individuals are reborn as citizens of the new nation state.

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  1. Setsunan University, Neyagawa, Osaka, Japan

    Kiichiro Yagi

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  1. Kiichiro Yagi
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Correspondence to Kiichiro Yagi.

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Yagi, K. A note on discourse ethics and naturalized social contracts. Evolut Inst Econ Rev 15, 341–350 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-018-0105-x

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